Views
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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 – 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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Girona – at High Speed
Girona is a beautiful old city. It is a place apparently well known as the backdrop to a series of “Game of Thrones” – a popular drama series that I have never seen, but which apparently many others have enthusiastically watched. Girona is also on a high speed train line from Barcelona, with an ultramodern…
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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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Wild Flowers – Wisley
The Royal Horticultural Society Garden at Wisley seems to have gone big on wild flowers this year. Of course there are still lots of formal gardens, exotic plants, hard-to-keep-alive plants in rude health and immaculate lawns, but here and there a riot of multicoloured mayhem has been encouraged to happen, kept in order only by…
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Sundial
Sundials work better on some days than others. This one in the gardens at Polesden Lacey was working on the day that we saw it, for the simple reason that the sun was shining. Curiously however it was not quite showing the correct time – even after making allowance for the fact that our watches…
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Siding – Shenfield Station
Shenfield is a commuter town on the train line out of Liverpool Street in London, and happens to be where I grew up. Today the town has become one the the endpoints for the shiny new Elizabeth Line, but not so long ago this decrepit guard’s van was also to be seen in a siding…
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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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Cologne at Night
It seems that almost everywhere you look in Cologne you can see the twin towers of the cathedral and the glass roof of the main train station. Of course there are places from which neither landmark is visible, but there don’t seem to be as many such places as one might expect. So, true to…
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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…
Doodling ... 