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.

5) Czech Republic - Prague - Old Town

I read a guide book to Prague which said that Prague is a great walking city - true - and that walking through Prague for a couple of hours is like walking through a 3-D architectural history book. Once you've crossed the Charles Bridge from the Castle side, then you're pretty much in the Old Town. Narrow streets and a dazzling array of architectural styles make this one of my favourite areas of any city that I've visited.

Building in Prague Old Town

This building, for example, really isn't anything special, but it's typical of what you can find around any corner in the old town. I liked it, which is why I sketched it.

Prague Old Town

 Here's another one. Again, this building has no special purpose, but just look at it. It's a star. I liked framing it within the whole street scene too, which for me makes this a slightly better sketch than the one above.

Prague - Old Town - Astronomical Clock

 This astronomical clock, on the wall of the old Town Hall in the square in the centre of the Old Town is one of the best loved tourist attractions in the whole of Prague. It's pretty much always crowded, which is why the crowd make an essential part of this sketch.

Town Square - Old Town - Prague

If I'm honest I'm not really certain that the slight watercolour tints add anything much to this sketch, but you have to start somewhere, and by the time I got to Berlin in August I was able to produce some more confident line and wash work.

4) Czech Republic - Prague - Charles Bridge - April 2017

Charles Bridge, Prague

I've already explained the circumstances of my trip to Prague n April 2017. One sight that I sketched more than once is the Charles Bridge. I will confess, I have a thing about bridges. I once took part ina very well known British quiz show where contenders are required to answer questions on a specialist subject, and one of the subjects I picked was the History of London Bridge, The Charles Bridge is a really good one - built across the River Vltava in the 14th and 15th centuries. It's named after King Charles IV of Bohemia, in whose reign construction started. It has stunningly impressive gothic towers at both ends.

I like this sketch, since I took great time and trouble over it, fortuitously adding the two silhouette figures just as I was about to finish.

Monk on Charles Bridge

This sketch on the other hand was all about the figure when I started it. I was crossing the bridge first thing in the morning, and saw and followed this monk, sketching furiously as I did. Then I added other figures one by one - to this extent it's a composite sketch. These figures were all there, but not all at the same time. You can see the towers a little more clearly.

Charles Bridge

This is my clearest sketch of the bridge, from the Old Town side. Sadly it's not complete. All I can tell you is that the day was nobbling cold. It took me about 10-15 minutes to get this far, and by then my hands were absolutely frozen.

The next day was a little warmer, but I didn't return to sketching the bridge itself. I did, though, makes this sketch of the statue of Charles IV at the Old Town end of the bridge.

Statue of Charles IV of Bohemia - Charles Bridge