After returning from Prague, I still had a couple of weeks on my sick note, as it were. I was aware of the therapeutic effect that making the sketches in Prague had brought me, and so I tried to get out and around in Wales to make some more sketches.
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| Dylan Thomas' boathouse - Laugharne |
It's a source of shame to me to admit this, but before this, despite living in Wales for 30 years, and despite me being an English Literature graduate and English teacher, I had never previously visited Dylan Thomas' boathouse. Laugharne is an achingly beautiful place on a bright Spring day like this.
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| Back alley - Laugharne |
Laugharne has this really charming higgledy-piggledyness, being built on little hills which reach down to the sea, and I fell in love with this view, and stood there for about an hour, trying to get it all down before fatigue set in.
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| St. Fagans Open Air Museum - former Aberystwyth tollhouse |
The Museum of Welsh Life in St Fagans just outside Cardiff is a place I've visited with my kids on several occasions. At a loss for what to sketch one cold day towards the end of April, I went and made this and the following two sketches.
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| St. Fagans Open Air Museum - Gwalia Stores |
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| St Fagans Open Air Museum - Oakdale Institute |
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| Brecon, Mid Wales |
Brecon is another Welsh town which has a charming randomness about its streets. In centuries past Brecon was an important market town, and the county town of Brecknockshire, and its streets still follow the medieval street plan.
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| Brecon - Mid Wales |
Although I say it myself, I think that you can see how I'd started to develop a personal sketching style since returning from Prague - a more graphic style, with heavy use of shade and shadow to give texture.
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| Brecon - Mid Wales |
I do like street scenes, and this sketch from Brecon is one of my favourites. Something as fiddly as this does take time though, and if there's no convenient place to sit you can get some very funny looks from people who pass on the narrow streets.
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| Cardiff |
Finally, three street scenes from Cardiff. All of them are composite sketches - using the technique I used in Prague of adding a couple of figures at a time before sketching in the buildings to build up the whole picture
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| Cardiff - nr. Cardiff Castle |
The two figures in the foreground here are my daughter Jess and future son in law Dan
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| Cardiff - Hayes |
I like the contrast between the dark, almost silhouetted figures, and the light buildings.
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