Galloway – a good place to rest, no need to count sheep…
Galloway, part 3
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Category Archives: drawing
Horse Chestnut Tree, Potternewton Park
This tree in my local park is wider than it’s tall. Two weeks ago, the candles were at their best. I’ve painted horse chestnuts in blossom for a few years – it’s not easy and this is my favourite attempt so far. I’ll have another go next year…
Birkenhead Docks – Present and Future
East Float, 2015
Standing at Tower Wharf in the chilly choppy wind, looking across East Float, one of Birkenhead’s inland docks.
The area is due for transformation in the Wirral Waters development project, a 30 year plan to regenerate the area.
In 2045, this could be the view…
East Float, 2045
Hope some one is around to comment.
Public toilets, Woodhouse Moor, Leeds
Today is World Toilet Day, a UN program to draw attention to the sanitation crisis. 1-in-3 people in the world don’t have a clean, safe toilet!
These public toilets at Hyde Park corner in LS6 are now disused – a slash in the Council’s budget, we assume.
There are about 8000 public toilets left in the UK.
See also:
Public toilets, New Brighton, Wirral
Public toilets, Sea Palling, Norfolk
6th August, 1945
River Mersey – Three Queens
The 175th anniversary of the Cunard Line, Liverpool, May 25th 2015 – the three ships Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria and Queen Mary II, meet in the River Mersey and perform aquatic manoeuvres neither seen nor attempted before.
It was a sight to behold – a strange and unexpectedly emotional experience. Many scousers, including me, wept with pride.
Telephone Box
Phone box, Lidgett Park Road LS8
There are about 10,500 red telephone boxes like this one left in the UK.
It’s the K6 model – over 60,000 were installed since it’s design in 1935 by Giles Gilbert Scott. The same year my mum was born and Alcoholics Anonymous started.
The red phone box was recently voted the best British design of all time – beating Spitfire, London taxis and the miniskirt. Of course, that’s debatable. This phone box is by St Edmund’s Church in Roundhay, Leeds 8.
The No Tree
As I went out one morning… I spied graffiti on graffiti. Someone had written NO on a yellow spot that was spray-painted on a beech tree.
Unless you had an interest in yellow spots, you might not have noticed it.
The yellow spots appeared on about 120 trees a few months ago to mark them for felling.
Gledhow Valley Woods, Leeds 8.
The Lodge House
I was commissioned to make a portrait of this former lodge house, built in 1888 by Sir Charles Ryder, one of the original partners of Tetley’s Brewery. I drew the house a few times before I painted it. In the middle of one drawing about 300 or 400 geese flew overhead, very high up. They flew and honked their way west in a giant V-formation that changed shape as they went – but they didn’t make it into the painting.
Thorn Lodge, Roundhay
The Low Sun
Poetry links:
November Night, Adelaide Crapsey
The Day grew small surrounded tight, Emily Dickinson
November, Thomas Hood
November, Ted Hughes
Jo Dunn 