Street Scenes
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Ye Olde Shoppe
To be honest I’m not really sure quite how old this shop is. It is certainly built in an older style than the two concrete blocks that hem it in, and it probably helps that I’ve drawn it slightly wonky, giving it that twisted look that most really old buildings have! As a final coup…
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Lantern
These platform lanterns are to be found at many temples in Japan, particularly Buddhist temples. I understand that they are full of symbolism, but that aside they are also visually very interesting, plenty of detail, sturdy yet graceful. Of course the temptation is always to feature the temple itself in any picture, but here I…
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Pub Sign
These lanterns hang outside many Japanese restaurants and izakaya (居酒屋) – a term often translated as “Japanese pub”. It took a little while for me to realise that these lanterns promised some kind of refreshment close by, but once the penny had dropped they were very useful when looking for something to eat or drink.…
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City Lights
The City contains a lot of wrought iron, some of it genuinely Victorian and some just trying to look as if it might be that old! This light is situated in a very new part of London, which I have just discovered is called Bazalgette Embankment. Now Joseph Bazalgette was a Victorian engineer who built…
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Le Grand Café
This magnificent building stands in the middle of Brussels beside the old Bourse, and I guess once kept the financiers of the city fed and watered as they traded their way to success or ruin in the industrial expansion of nineteenth century Belgium. Fortunately the hostelry didn’t seem to be suffering any lack of customers…
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A Door In Strasbourg
There are some very imposing front doors in Strasbourg – decorated but yet very solid – fine examples of French (or perhaps German given how often the border has moved!) workmanship. At the point where I had the shape of this image defined in pen I had high hopes for this picture. Unfortunately the watercolour…
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Christmas Tree
The corner of this earth that I call home is awash with these things at this time of year. Often they are very pretty, occasionally they are rather garish, only rarely are they disappointing. The tree on which this painting is based was (and almost certainly still is at time of writing) in Place Kléber,…
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Quiet Street
The Christmas Market in Strasbourg was busy enough this year, but the punters tend to favour afternoons and evenings for their festive purchases, so earlier in the day it is still possible to find quiet streets even near the city centre. This street (Rue de l’Epine) was genuinely empty when my phone snapped this photograph…
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Bunting
This is a view along Church Street in Hereford, looking towards the cathedral, which is where I spotted this bunting whilst visiting the city in early June. I’m not really sure why the bunting was up – there had been celebrations for the 80th anniversary of VE Day a few weeks earlier, so maybe the…
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Hagia Sophia
This is a remarkable building. It is almost 1500 years old, which is not bad for a building sited in the middle of an earthquake zone! It was for a long time the world’s largest interior space, and the design of this building, in particular its large central dome, effectively became the archetype for the…
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Pergamon
This is a view from the Asclepion of Pergamon towards the Acropolis, which true to its name is on the top of the hill in the background. We visited Pergamon as one of the seven churches mentioned in the Revelation to St John, found at the end of the bible. However, to me one of…
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Bus Montage
Many buses in Sri Lanka have very fancy decoration – this one was I think the fanciest but there were many others that had been glammed up to a similar extent. I was told that they do this to get noticed and so attract extra passengers. I’m not sure if the paint jobs attract extra…
Doodling ... 