Thursday, 12 June 2025

2025 30x30 Direct Watercolour Challenge 9 - 13

 In my last post I showed my first 8 direct watercolours of this year's challenge. I have tried to produce full pictures, with backgrounds. My broken left shoulder means I can spend time on each picture and this may be why, in my opinion, these are the most consistent set I have produced in any year. Here are the next five. See whether you agree.

9 I find Americana a very fruitful source of inspiration, and likewise, I do enjoy portraying vehicles.

10- this is the beautiful city of Chester. At the moment this is about as good as I can do. Really pleased with this.

11 Way out of my comfort zone here, This was made on the 10th, the second picture of the day, to put me one day ahead.

12 I made this in my Canson mixed media journal. This is maybe why it is a little sketchy. I like the way that the bus wheel came out.

13 My reference photo has the car blue, but I love to see a red Morgan 3 wheeler so that's what I've painted. 

So that's where we ae - still 1 day ahead of schedule. More than a third done and closing in on the halfway mark

Sunday, 8 June 2025

2025 30 x 30 Direct Watercolour Challenge

I don’t think I’ve posted since before last Friday, That was the day that I broke my left shoulder. Which is one good reason why I haven’t posted. One handed typing is a pain. One other reason why I haven’t posted since is that it’s now June, and June is the time of the 30x30 direct watercolour challenge. Direct watercolour means that you don’t sketch the design first – you have to go straight in with watercolour.

I first undertook the challenge in 2018 and I did complete it. I repeated in 2019, did not attempt it in 2020 and then made my third completion in 2021. Especially in these earlier years I quite often made quite sketchy paintings that were pretty quick and easy to do. I look at the stuff I did in those years and it’s not brilliant at all. Well, we all have to start somewhere. Then in 2022 I managed to make some pictures that I was quite proud of during the challenge. Not all of them by any means, but certainly some of them. In 2023 this continued, and although some of the first ten were a wee bit ropey, as a set they were clearly the best I’ve done. I loved the whole experience.

2024 it was a different story. Whereas my first ten were inconsistent the year before, now they were very consistent. Consistently bad. I didn’t think that any of them were any good. If I had managed one decent picture then maybe I might have continued. However they were all rubbish and I gave up after 10. I wasn’t annoyed with the fact that I wasn’t doing better than 23. I was angry with myself that I’d gone so far backwards.

So to 2025. I promised myself this –

I would give myself however long was necessary to make each painting and not go chasing the schedule of at least 1 per day.

I would on the same hand be prepared to stop working on each painting when I had done what I could and not overwork it.

I would be more experimental with colours

I would be doing it for fun

So 9 days in how is it going. Well, judge for yourself – here’s the first 8 –

1 – Old Royal Mail Van. One of my 2023 favourites also had an old postman’s van, although the one in this is older. Really pleased – a lot of quite difficult elements in this.

2 – Multicoloured warthog. I set out to be experimental here and I do rather like the results. One friend has already asked for a print.

3 – Donkey. Probably the weakest of the 8 so far. The actual modelling of the animal itself isn’t bad. I like the ghostly trees in the background. But I think I needed to be bolder with the colours. The overall effect is a little insipid.

4 – bull – Nothing insipid about the colours with this one. It was a bit of a reaction to what happened with the donkey and although it’s maybe a little more crude, I think it’s far more successful.

5 – 1940’s London. My plan with this was to use some bigger blocks of colour than I normally do and less detail and more suggestion. I am bowled over by the result. Yeah, it’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a painting that turned out very close to the picture that was in my head when I started. If I could have made something like this last year then I might well have completed the challenge.

6 – Oslo tiger statue – a very different painting, much bolder. I think the modelling of the statue itself is really good. Although when I was in Oslo in January it was so dull and gloomy it was hard to believe that the place ever looked like this.

7 – mid century grocer. It was time I made at least 1 picture where the focus is on a human figure. I have overworked the face, sadly. At least it’s not a complete wash out – I like the work on the shirt, for example.

8 – 30s/40’s Americana. While I was looking for reference photos for my grocer I came upon a photo showing this. I knew it would work as a subject if I could do my best to do it justice. Overall it took hours butt I’m stupidly pleased with the result

Well, look, I have to say that I think it’s the best start I’ve ever made to a 30x30 challenge. I think I’ve certainly spent more time on it than I’ve ever done before. Will the quality continue. Watch this space.

Sunday, 18 May 2025

Weekend Sketches

Yesterday I just never found the time for another watercolour Treasure Island copy. In the last two or three months I’ve just been working in my Canson A5 mixed media sketching journal. However on Friday I wanted to make a copy of one of William Heath Robinson’s illustrations for the poems of Edgar Allan Poe. The original is such a complex illustration that I decided to use one of the empty pages in my Daler Rowney A4 sketchbook. Here’s my copy.

You know, I enjoyed it so much that I used the book for all of my sketches this weekend. Amongst others was this copy of a Treasure Island illustration by Walter Paget. Paget was a respected and very successful English illustrator in the last years of the 19th century ad the first couple of decades of the 20th. His illustrations to “Treasure Island” provide many striking images of the story and are amongst the most popular.

Finally, then, old Victoria London, a favourite subject of mine to sketch. This one took hours.



Sunday, 11 May 2025

This week's pirate

Sorry – I’m a little bit late posting this one. This is my copy of Robert Ingpen’s Long John Silver. Robert Ingpen is an Australian artist and his illustrations of “Treasure Island” are among my favourites.



Monday, 5 May 2025

Seven Ages of Public Transport on London's Roads

 Last week I posted recent sketches of various forms of public transport on London's roads through the ages. I realised hat I hadn't made a new sketch of a trolleybus. So, here we go, in chronological order of their use rather than when I made them

1) Horse drawn bus


2) Horse drawn tram


Electric Tram


Motor Bus


Trolley Bus

Double Decker 


Now, yes, I know that's only six. Because I haven't yet done what should be the last of he series, a modern London Double Decker. Watch this space.

Sunday, 4 May 2025

This week's Pirate

 Sorry, busy and no real time for chat this morning. Yesterday though was the third consecutive Saturday when I made a watercolour copy of an original Treasure Island illustration. The original of this was by Louis Rhaed and made at the end of the 19th or start of the 20th century. 



Sunday, 27 April 2025

Me and London Buses (and Trams

You know, if I’ve got an old, or very old black and white photograph of London to use as reference for a sketch, then I’m happy. If it has a method of public transport in it, then doubly so. What can I say? I’m a simple soul. So while I’ve been chancing my arm at copying some Treasure Island illustrations recently, during the last week or two I’ve also been making some sketches of London transport. Here they are:-

London’s first ever scheduled horse drawn buses were operated by Mr. George Shillibeer in 1829. Shillibeer – shilli name. Regulations over the next 30 years saw more efficient, lighter buses which could carry more passengers. Horse drawn services came under competition from motor buses and electric trams from the end of the Victorian era, and the last horse drawn service was withdrawn in 1911. The bus in the picture was operated by the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC). The company was formed in the eighteen fifties, and was one of the main companies to be amalgamated to form London Transport in the 1930s.

London’s first red motorbuses were operated by the LGOC – General for short. In fact London Transport would use the same colour scheme when they took over. London’s first really successful motor bus was the type B that entered service in 1911. During World War I 900 of these buses were sent out to the Western Front where they were nicknamed ‘Ole Bill’ after a popular newspaper cartoon figure of the time. The last Type B was withdrawn in 1926.

A couple of horse drawn tram lines began running in London in the 1860s, but they didn’t really get going until the 1870s.Electric powered trams weren’t used until the first years of the 20th century. By the outbreak of the First World War London had the largest tram network in Europe. However it was hard for tram companies to find investment for further expansion in the 1920s. Trams were expensive to maintain and competition from larger and more reliable motorised buses saw some companies increasingly switching. By the mid 30s it had been decided to replace London’s remaining tramways with motor buses and with trolleybuses powered by overhead wires. The outbreak of World War 2 meant that the last tram services remained until 1951.

It's probably fair to say that no form of public transport ever contributed so much to London as the Routemaster double decker bus. Its contribution to London’s visual identity alone is immense. The iconic Routemaster first ran in 1954, and even though production ended in 1968 Routemaster services were still running into the new millennium, finally ending in 2005. I haven’t lived in London for 39 years, but I was born there, I grew up there, I went to London University. It will always be my home town. And there are some things which always feel like home to me, and a Routemaster bus is one of them. Thankfully, of the almost 3000 built, over a third of them still exist.