14) Hungary - One Day in Budapest - Other Pictures

St. Matyas Church, Buda

 Yes, this is one of the pictures that I finished off in the evening back at the hotel. It was taking ages, it was cold, and time was getting on. It's a stunning looking church, high on the same hill that houses the Castle.

Chain Bridge, from Pest side of the Danube

 My first attempt to sketch the Chain Bridge. It just doesn't work because of that crenelated tower in front of it.

St. Matyas Church and the Fishermens Bastion, Buda

 My first sketch of part of the Matyas Church, and the Fisherman's bastion beside it, which is a great place to look down and out across the river and the rest of the city.

Budapest Parliament Building - Buda - from Danube

This is the other sketch I finished off in the hotel. I made a very quick outline sketch on the boat, but most of the work was done from the photograph.

13) Hungary - One Day in Budapest - November 2017 - Required Elements

Alright, it wasn't exactly 1 day. I flew out on Tuesday 31st, but didn't arrive at the hotel until after dark. I did go into the centre of town by tram and metro, but it was too dark to make sketches. I spent all day in the centre of Budapest until after dark on Wednesday 1st, and flew home early on Thursday 2nd. Well, half term holidays are short, and you have to make the most of them. As such, I was pleased with the number of sketches I made on the day - although I will admit that a few of them were started on site, but finished in the evening back at the hotel with the help of photos I took at the same time.

Budapest - Chain Bridge

 I first saw this iconic bridge lit up at night. When I looked at it, being a Londoner, my first thought was - Hammersmith Bridge. Only, it doesn't look like the current Hammersmith Bridge very much. But I must have been thinking of the previous Hammersmith Bridge, since not only were they very similar, they were also designed by the same man, an Englishman called William Tierney Clark. Once I'd started comparing these Budapest bridges to bridges on the Thames, I couldn't stop. The next two bridges struck me as being like Chelsea Bridge and the Albert Bridge - even though the similarity is slight at best. As for the Chain Bridge, the original Hammersmith Bridge has gone, but Tierney Clark's Marlow Bridge in Buckinghamshire , which was built as a dry run for this one, is still there for a comparison if you're interested.

Castle - Buda - sketched from boat while waiting for sightseeing trip to start

 I did take a sightseeing boat trip down the Danube for an hour or so. Not as interesting as the Spree trip in Berlin, but more interesting than the Vltava trip in Prague. This is the castle complex in Buda. You can either walk up to it, or do as I did and take a ride in the funicular railway.I made this sketch while waiting for 15 minutes or so for the boat to depart.

Heritage tram - Danube riverbank - Pest side

 The most interesting - slightly older looking trams in Budapest run along either bank of the Danube. I sketched this one by the stop just along from the Chain Bridge. Not one person in Budapest stopped to look at any of my sketches at all. I must be losing what little touch I ever had.

Number 50 tram - Hatar Ut metro station

One of the things I love about a European trip is when you can leave your hotel early in the morning, and walk down the road a short way then hop on a tram. From my hotel you just had to cross the road to the tram stop, and take a 15 minute ride on the number 50 tram to the end of the line at the Hatar Ut metro station. These trams are pretty much as modern and efficient as you could ask - almost up to Berlin standards. In which case its such a shame that some of the passengers take them so much for granted, and show so little respect as to leave half eaten pizza on the seats and on the floor.

12) Germany - Berlin - Other sketches - late August 2017

Domkirche - Berlin Cathedral

 This is the Domkirche - the late baroque masterpiece which houses the tombs of the Hohenzollern Kings of Prussia and Kaisers of the German Empire. I sketched it from the side of the Spree.

Marienkirche - St. Mary's Church

The Marienkirche is one of the oldest churches in East Central Berlin, and it's not without its own beauty.  It sits to the side of a square, at the end of which is the Rathus, or town hall, behind a very ornate fountain.

Brandenburg Gate

 An iconic image of Berlin. Its so easy now to cross from East to West Berlin that it's difficult to visualise that this place was the symbol of the Cold War once upon a time.

Mozart - Haydn - Beethoven Memorial - Tiergarten

 If you walk west through the Brandenburg Gate, and keep walking, you'll eventually come to the Siegsaule - pictured below. The thing is, though, that the Siegsaule is so tall, that you think it's a lot closer than it is. I was, after walking from the Brandenburg Gate to the Siegsaule, knackered. Even after resting to make the sketch, I was soon knackered walking back. This time though I walked through the Tiergarten, the park which runs alongside the road. I found this charming memorial to three great composers, and sat down on a bench beside it and made this sketch to give me a bit more recovery time.

Altes Museum - Museum Island

 Back to Museum Island. I was waiting for the airport bus and made this sketch while I did so. A group of passers by liked it, and the little Italian guy who was selling ice creams by the side of the road even asked me if he could take a photo of it. He didn't give me a free ice cream, though.

Berlin Rathaus

 This is the aforementioned Rathaus. It's not a great sketch this, although to be fair the scanner does seem to have exaggerated the slight sland to the tower which my sketch had (the original building is as straight as a dye, I hasten to add) I was intrigued because to me this looks very like a German cousin of the contemporary Cardiff Pierhead building. Did the architect have a bike?

Siegsaule - West Berlin

The Siegsaule. Literally the Victory column, which was built to commemorate the Prussian victories over Denmark, Austria and then France in the second half of the 19th century, which led to the unification of Germany in 1871.

11) Germany - Berlin - late August 2017 - Required elements

Next on the itinerary, and the last chance to go anywhere during the long school Summer Holidays, was Berlin. My wife bought me this trip as a Christmas present back in Christmas 2016, and I'd been really looking forward to it. It was another European capital city, which was reason enough, but more than that it was fair to expect that Berlin is one of the great European capitals.

I had two full days and another half day in Berlin, and I found that I did spend most of that time in East Berlin. So let's get to the trams and the river and the bridges.

Bode Museum - Museum Island

 Okay - now I didn't actually make a sketch while I was on the river - although I did take a sightseeing trip along the Spree. I have to say that I enjoyed it more than the trip on the Vltava in Prague too. Berlin 's river, the Spree is home to an island which houses five of the world's great museums - hence its name of Museum Island. This is the Bode Museum, at the tip of the island, and is one I made sitting on the opposite bank of the river. It was one of several sketches which passers by stopped to talk about, I'm happy to say.

Oberbaumbrucke bridge

 Ah yes. Now, I wouldn't say that the bridges in the centre of the city crossing the Spree are ugly. They're rather nondescript, though, and I was starting to despair of finding a real signature bridge for Berlin, until I found a photo of this, the Oberbaumbrucke, online. This is actually a road and rail bridge, as it carries one line of the U-Bahn, the Berlin underground railway to its ending. You have to go East to the end of the line, mind you, but it's worth it. I mean, let's be honest, this bridge is mad, almost Wagnerian, and I like it very much. It was a burningly hot day, though, and I burned my bald spot while I was painting this.

Hackesscher Markt S-Bahn Station

 The Hackescher Markt is a large market in the centre of East Berlin. It's also a rather nice station of the S-Bahn, Berlin's other, rather grander metro system. This was another one which attracted some nice comments, from a group of Spanish people no less, who turned out to know Catral quite well.

Hackescher Markt - catching the M6 tram to the hotel

I'll be honest, I couldn't get much enthusiasm for sketching Berlin's sleek, modern and highly efficient trams - this is the only sketch I made on the spot. This one was done from photos later-

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10) Spain - Alicante Area - Catral-Dolores-La Marina area - Early August 2017

Church - outside Dolores

 Confession time. I saw this church as we waited by traffic lights in the car, and took a phot. This line and wash is based on that photo, and not made on the spot, sadly. It would have held up the traffic if I'd tries to do it in situ.

El Pinet Beach nr. La Marina

 This I did do sitting on the sand by the water's edge, and it's not too bad thought I say it myself.

Catral - late breakfast

 Will you please put your pen and your sketchbook down and eat your breakfast - I think that's what they said while I was doing this one. To which the answer was - no, sorry.

Catral Saturday morning market

 Too hard to stand painting in the market so had to make do with an ink sketch . I found that I got far more interested in combining figures to make the picture than I was in the scene itself.

Catral - evening in main street

Again - will you please put your bleep sketchbook down so we can go in and eat. We had a lovely Chinese meal too once I finished this one.

9) Spain - ALicante area - early August 2017

San Isidro Church nr. Alicante

 My mother in law, and my wife's stepfather live in a wee village called San Isidro, about 15/20 minutes outside Alicante on the Costa Blanca. The village itself was a new construct in the 1950s, and this modernist church dates from 1956. I'm not the greatest fan of modernism myself, but this building is clean and unfussy, and has a certain elegance. One thing I found about being in Spain was that the brightness of the light was an encouragement to be more adventurous with line and wash watercolour.

Backstreet roof garden San Isidro nr. Alicante

 I just liked this back street roof garden.

Former San Isidro Station platform shelter - San Isidro nr. Alicante

 Now, when they rebuilt San Isidro - Catral - Albatera station a few years ago, they did a very clever and rather wonderful thing. They took this, the back wall of the station and the canopy over the platform, and transplanted it in another street to provide a rather lovely public performance space. Bravo.

La Cerveceria - San Isidro - nr. Alicante

 This is the Cerveceria - a restaurant which hosted my mother in law's birthday party, while the painting below shows her house and smart car.

San Isidro Street - nr. Alicante

8) Wales - May 2017

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.

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.

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.

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.

St. Fagans Open Air Museum - Gwalia Stores

St Fagans Open Air Museum - Oakdale Institute

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.

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.

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.

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

Cardiff - nr. Cardiff Castle

 The two figures in the foreground here are my daughter Jess and future son in law Dan

Cardiff - Hayes

I like the contrast between the dark, almost silhouetted figures, and the light buildings.

7) Czech Republic - Prague - Other sketches - April 2017

Vintage style car cruiser - Prague Old Town

 These stylish car tour vehicles were everywhere. You can't drive through every street in the Old Town, but through the few that you can drive, these were a constant.

St. Nicholas Church - Prague

This is y favourite church in Prague, and it's pretty much as good inside as it looks outside. It's a baroque masterpiece which sits on the same hill as the castle complex, only a little lower down.

Watercolour - Prague Old Town Powder Tower

 This is the only true watercolour I made in Prague, and I won't lie - it's based on a photograph. This illustrates one of the great things about the Old Town - you can literally turn a corner and find a medieval remnant just waiting for you to admire it, like this one.

Prague Legionariu Bridge

 You can see the dome of the St. Nicholas Church here in the background. This is a perfectly tidy metal arched bridge which only suffers by comparison with the Charles Bridge, which is really unfair competition for most bridges.

Prague - Number 23 tram approaching Legionariu Bridge

 Yes, as well as bridges I also have a thing about trams. This is the number 23 tram which I used to get to and from my hotel in Kubanski Namesti. I won't lie. I had to sketch incredibly quickly, but even so I needed three number 23s to stop there before I had the tram finished. The figures were sketched in the same way as I often do to form a composite sketch - as I've said before, they were all there, but not necessarily at the same time. This next sketch was made later from a photo that I took at the time: -

Prague Tram Café - Wenceslaus Square

 Imagine my delight to discover the café to one side of Wenceslaus Square made out of 2 vintage trams. I sat down and ordered the most expensive cup of coffee in Prague ( I can't prove this, but I can't believe anywhere else charged more) while I sketched this.

Prague - Church sketched while sitting on a bench in the street market off Wenceslaus Square

I made this sketch about an hour before my airport transfer was due to pick me up just off Wenceslaus Square, and finally a couple of passers by reacted and took a good look at my sketch. I was beginning to get paranoid through lack of feedback.

6) Czech Republic - Prague - Castle area

Entrance to Prague Castle complex

 Read any guidebook to Prague and it will tell you that you have to visit the Prague Castle Complex. And it's certainly very impressive. If for no other reason, you should visit it to get a close view of St. Vitus Cathedral. I ended up queueing for about 30 minutes to get in - but thankfully this was just for a bag check - and cost nothing.

St. Vitus Cathedral

No cracks about the urge to dance uncontrollably here, please. It was a day when, while sitting on the steps across the square while sketching the cathedral, in the space of an hour there was bright sunshine, torrential rain, and then snow. A wonderfully gothic building, although not my favourite church in Prague

Prague Castle Complex viewed from the River

Once again, St. Vitus Cathedral, and this at least should give you some idea of the impressiveness of the castle complex as a whole. Prague was the first of these sketching trips of mine, and it established a certain protocol for me. Namely, that whenever on a sketching trip to a sizeable city I must: -
* Ride on a tram
* Ride on the metro/underground railway
* Take a sightseeing trip on a boat on the river
I made this sketch while waiting for the boat to set off down the Vltava. To be honest, it wasn't the most interesting of sightseeing trips, but still good fun.