Buildings
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Back Door
I’m really not sure about this one! The original pen drawing was done in the back garden of a cottage in Longtown, more or less an exercise in capturing perspective and different textures. So far, so good – except that the original drawing is rather pedestrian. Therefore, as I have already done with other so-so…
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View from Chartwell
Chartwell was the family home of Winston Churchill, who as well as being a renowned wartime leader was also a prodigious artist – indeed many of his paintings are on display at the house and in various outbuildings in the grounds. I think that here I have managed to pick a view from a window…
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Dunster Yarn Market
Just down the hill from Dunster Castle is the village, which contains a very fine 17th century Yarn Market. Given the weather that we had when we first arrived in Dunster I can only imagine this building was erected primarily to keep the cloth in the market dry! The angles of this building seemed well…
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Dunster – Entrance
A stone archway can often be relied upon to make a good frame for a picture, as long as there is something interesting visible through the arch. In the case of the entrance into Dunster Castle (or more precisely the exit as this is the vista as one leaves the castle!) the view through the…
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Stained Glass – Christ Church
A while ago we showed some American friends around Oxford. Their reaction to all the old buildings was of course quite predictable, but what I hadn’t expected was that their awe would also make me appreciate again buildings that had become all too familiar. One of these, the cathedral in Christ Church, was an oasis…
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Stained Glass – Sagrada Familia
I can’t quite decide whether this painting is okay or not! On the one hand it definitely doesn’t capture the vibrant colours in the glass that my eyes saw at the time and that my camera captured for posterity. On the other hand, it is quite a pleasant picture to look at, and it does…
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Bruges – Heilige Geeststraat
I don’t recall ever seeing a road in the UK named “Holy Ghost Street” – nor indeed anywhere else in my travels. However, rather than declare this to be an unusual name for a road and assume that this is a particularly Belgian thing, I am quite willing to admit that perhaps I just have…
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Monte dei Paschi di Siena
Around about a decade ago, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena was attracting more publicity than the bank probably wanted, mainly due to problems they were having at the time with bad loans and losses. This general view of the bank’s historic headquarters accompanied many of the press articles at the time, but in the…
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St Michael’s Church – Betchworth
Another place where our art group meets to draw and paint in the open is Betchworth, and one obvious thing to concentrate our artistic endeavours on is the parish church. This is a quintessential rural parish church building that found recent fame as one of the film locations for the film “Four Weddings and a…
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Murano – Canale San Donato
Venice is lovely, but quite intense. The nearby islands of Murano and Burano offer a respite of calm – both the building and the tourist density on these islands is noticeably lower than the slightly misnamed “Serenissima”. This painting is fairly faithful to the photo that I took during our visit to Murano, in that…
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Fünf Höfe, Munich
I was rather taken with the greenery hanging from the ceiling, and indeed with the view and colours of the whole space. I suspect that I was supposed instead to have been taken by the range of shops, but getting me interested in shopping is not easy, as my wife will readily attest! I think…
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Wat Mahathat, Ayutthaya
Ayutthaya Historical Park in Thailand contains a large complex of ruined temple buildings. We saw them in the early evening, at a time when the lower position of the sun gave a deep warm glow to the brickwork and created many interesting shadows. Ignoring the wonderful colours of the evening light, I used a simple…
Doodling ... 