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.

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.

Basingstoke Spiritualist Church

Yesterday, I had occasion to be loitering in the Proteus Creation Space car park. Our - Artikinesis' - exhibition was within the Creation Space. Making more pictures of Basingstoke was, of course, completely pointless.

So I did it anyway.

I had had my eye on the Spiritualist Church building for a while. A low, corrugated shack, directly opposite the grandeur of All Saints (not pictured), it looks like a relic from a not-too-distant past.

Drawn in an A6 sketchbook using Winsor and Newton's Indian Red calligraphy ink, loaded into my Sailor Fude de Mannen (Japanese calligraphy pen).