Ferry ports

 

Dover and Calais

Calais

Calais

Cornwall, August 2017

St Michael's Mount from the beach at Marazion

The beach at Marazion

From the beach at Durgan

Newbury Spring Festival 2017: Leo Popplewell, Cellist, lunchtime recital at the Corn Exchange

Last year, I participated in a collaboration between the Newbury Spring Festival and the local Open Studios in which artists were invited to sketch at performances and rehearsals. The results of last year's collaboration (which involved six artists in total) are on display at the Newbury Corn Exchange until 24 May.

I really enjoyed the sketching, and I found working from those sketches to produce finished artworks a very satisfying process. So I was delighted when I discovered that I would be able to do it again this year. I was only able to fit one sketching date in my schedule, and that date was today's lunchtime recital - a performance by the young cellist Leo Popplewell.

There were, by coincidence, a lot of cellos last year. I have come to like cellos; they have beautiful curves and make a wonderful array of very lovely sounds. Young Mr. Poplewell certainly teases out a fabulous noise from his instrument. He was accompanied by Mikey Pandya on piano for the first part of the show (when they performed Sibelius - Malinconia Op.20 and Fauré - Sonata No.2 in G Op.117), but played alone on stage for the second part (Britten - Cello Suite No.1 Op.72).

Taking the train

Moderately crowded trains can be good places to observe and sketch people. They tend to stay fairly still and they tend to keep themselves occupied, making it easy to make unobtrusive sketches.

I recently made a number of journeys to London, and these are some of my sketches made on one such (I have omitted the few that include potentially recognisable faces). It was a busy train; I stood all the way from Basingstoke (a little over an hour).

 

But my children were happy to sit on the floor.

Sherwood Forest and Rufford Abbey

The Major Oak

We visited Sherwood Forest during the summer holidays, but as I just finished an oil painting based on the Robin Hood legend, it seems like a good time to catch up on the quick sketches I made there and at Rufford Abbey.

The ruins of Rufford Abbey, set within the house's own park, are within the Sherwood Forest area, but is not part of the Sherwood Forest Country Park, although both are run by Nottinghamshire County Council. Rufford is famed in the world of folk song for a true poaching incident - which you'll find in my song drawing right at the very bottom of this post. If you want to listen to the song, I can recommend Jim Moray's version.

Sherwood Forest visitors

Rufford Abbey

Rufford Abbey

The Rufford Park Poachers: A song drawing

Paradise in a paper bag

Oil pastel on A3 mixed media paper (cropped)

My son picked these apples (variety: Paradise Citta) from our little tree. It's still laden down with fruit.

The Making of Harry Potter - Studio Tour

Yesterday, we visited the Warner Bros site in Watford, where the sets, props and costumes from the eight Harry Potter films are presented to the public as a studio tour. There was a great deal to see, and while I had a sketchbook in my hand most of the time, I didn't come away with many worthwhile drawings - possibly because the subjects that suggested themselves were exceedingly large or intricate or both.

Steam Locomotive Oulton Hall

The Knight Bus

The inevitable gift shop at the end

Warneage

Four A6 fountain pen sketches

Warneage Wood in Wanborough, near Swindon was the venue for my meet-up with Polliemath today. We both did some sketching. These are my sketches.

Grassland in mixed media
(fountain pen, watercolour and Molotow marker)

Path in mixed media
(various inks, applied with fountain pens, brush,
poured and smudged with fingers; carbon; graphite;
Derwent Drawing pencil; dressmaker's chalk)

Bench in ink (Pilot Parallel and Sailor Fude de Mannen fountain pens)

Stranded Mermaid

St Swithun's church in Nately Scures (a very small place just off the A30 near Basingstoke) is tiny and very old, having been built by the Normans. And it has a mermaid.

Now, if you know where Basingstoke is, you'll realise that this mermaid (who lives on the top of the left-hand door pillar shown in the drawing below) is - by UK standards - a long way from home. Noone really knows what she's doing in Nately Scures, but I think that she's really rather charming.

Odiham Castle

Odiham Castle (known locally as King John's Castle) is not actually in Odiham, although it isn't very far away, being nominally in North Wanborough. It isn't really in any village, though; it stands, peacefully, by itself next to the Basingstoke Canal, which - fittingly - does not actually go to Basingstoke.

I was fascinated by the poppies growing on the walls (above).

All sketches A6, executed in fountain pen. 
Top sketch also has Inktense pencil and then more fountain pen ink, both added after leaving the site.

Moscow State Cellists

I was really excited to be asked, as an Open Studios Artist, to sit in on a number of Newbury Spring Festival events and draw them. My first event was this afternoon's rehearsal of the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra in the church of Saint Nicholas in the town. The music was incredible and the whole expeience was utterly fantastic.

The lead cellist made a special request of me (in excellent English) to draw the cello group. They stood patiently at the front of the stage... and I ran out of page. Fortunately, I had another one.

It's not the best drawing - I think I did not capture some members of the group very well at all - and it's a dreadful photograph and a bodged-up composite. but I did promise to post it, so here it is.

There were a few other drawings of the cellists, in action, that I think were more successful:

The lead cellist

The lead cellist lost in music

Another cellist lost in the music

I'm sure he knew I was drawing him

Concentration

Focus on the hands and instrument - and the cellist's face, not playing

At rest

All of these drawings were executed in fountain pens.

Hills

Two views of our local hills, sketched while out walking with a group, during the group's coffee and lunch breaks; two different pens and two different styles.