Jun 2021 30x30 Direct Watercolour challenge

 The annual direct watercolour challenge takes place in June every year. The  challenge is to make 30 watercolour paintings in the month of June. The drawback is that they must be direct watercolours - painted directly onto the paper, with no preliminary sketching. I took part in 2018 ad 2019 - not last year, ad I've been doing it again this year. With 11 days to go I've done 20 so far - here they are: - 

1) Kingfisher

2) Granada Bingo Hall, Acton

3) Kitten

4) Stag

5) Northfields Station

6) Tiger Road

7) Live Long and Prosper

8) Sudbury Hill Station

9) Greenford Underground

                                                                                Station

10) Painted Lady on Sunflowers

11) Blue Gene (Kelly)

12) Mont St. Michel

13) Trolleybus in Hanwell

14) Park Royal Underground Station

15) Durham Cathedral Sunrise

16) Honest Abe

17) Small Tortoiseshell on Lilacs

18) Chiswick park Station

19) Livepool and Manchester Railway Locomotive

20) Blue Miner

Old Bus

 I made this sketch since it combines my home borough, Ealing, and a gorgeous old Type B bus. Just as a bonus, you can see in front of the bus and to the left, a London United Tramways tram trundling off into the distance. 

Horse Drawn Bus Sketch

 I acquired a London Horse drawn bus model for my Matchbox London Bus collection, and so in celebration I made this ink sketch. I know it's vulgar to talk money, but then I'm a vulgar person, so I don't mind saying it's been a really good week for business with my Etsy shop - starting with a bumper order of Port Talbot prints, and then selling the first prints from my new Ealing range , and receiving a sketch commission. 

This bus has the destinations Waterloo and Somerset House on it. Well, surely that can't have been the whole route - after all, you can walk from one to the other in a few minutes. My great great grandfather wasn't a horse drawn bus driver, but he was a horse drawn dustcart driver, and I sometimes think back to what it must have been like, even on the streets of Victorian Hammersmith. Apart from anything else, with everything being horse drawn in those days the amount of manure deposited on the streets every day must have been prodigious. Poor man, I think he died at the age of 29 from penumonia, leaving 4 children behind him. Don't try to tell me about the Good Old Days. 

Ealing Sketchbook

 I think that I mentioned in yesterday's post that I've been making a series of sketches of my old home town, the London Borough of Ealing. When I get up in the morning, one of the first things I do is to fire up the computer and check on the Etsy shop. You can imagine my joy when I fired it up this morning, and found I'd sold my first Ealing print. In honour of that. I thought I'd share the sketches I've already made: -

This is the Odeon CInema in Northfields Avenue. It was built in the 1930s in a style that seems heavily influenced by Spanish Morish style, and I don't think there's another cinema quite like it. Sadly the cinema was closed in the 90s, and now is used by the good people of the Elim Pentecostal Church. I have sketched it before in its modern appearence. It's a real Ealing icon though, and brings back happy memories for several generations of Ealing people. 

This is the Wharncliffe Viaduct in Hanwell and it was built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Well, I say buuilt - I doubt he laid all of the bricks himself, but you know what I mean. It carried the first stretch of the Great Western Railway out of London and was built in the 1840s. 

This is St. Mary's Church, the original parish church of Ealing, and although the centre of the area has now moved towards the North in Ealing Broadway, it was the centre from which the settlement originally grew. The byzantine style used by architect S.S.Teulon isn't everybody's cup of tea, but I rather like it. 

A 607 ytolleybus plying the route along the Uxbridge Road, as it approaches Ealing Broadway. 

Ealing Town Hall, a fine example of high Victorian Gothic Revival Civic Architecture. Last I heard at least part of it is going to be made into a hotel. Sheesh!

This is the Hanwell Coronation Clock Tower, built to commemorate the Coronation of King George VI in 1937. It's a nice part of Hanwell, this, and when I was growing up I think that this place was nicknamed Taplin's corner, after an outfitters there. 

When the Ealing Broadway Centre was officially opened by the Queen in the 80s, she unveiled this statue called "Small Work Horse". I've always liked it very much. 

Now, I've no doubt that I don't need to remind the good people of Ealing that I do not give permission for any of these images to be downloaded and printed, but just in case people from other areas were thinking of doing so then please don't. If you'd like prints of any of these pictures they are all available, for ridiculously low prices, from my etsy shop - just click this link - 

My Etsy Shop

We're All Off Our Trollies

 It’s funny how your mind can get stuck in a rut, and run along the same tracks for days, even weeks at a time, even if you try to lead it down a detour.

I grew up in the London Borough of Ealing, and have been thinking about Ealing quite a bit since I discovered a blog which the author wrote about his childhood growing up in the 1950s in a house which was a very few streets away from the one I grew up in. Alright, I was born in the mid 60s, not the 50s, but even so it brought back a lot of memories. So over the weekend I made a number of sketches of Ealing. Well and good.

Now, you know from my last post that I’ve been collecting a mini fleet of Matchbox London bus models for my shelves. Look, they make me happy, okay? So, what was the latest of the sketches I made yesterday? Well – this one.

That’s the Uxbridge Road in Ealing, looking West towards West Ealing. And on the right, well, that’s a trolleybus. Trolleybuses were introduced to London’s streets from 1931. Although I would guess they were seen largely as a solution to the problems with trams – I’ll come to those – trams weren’t completely phased out in London until about 1951.

So why did London want rid of its trams in the first place? Well, Londoners as a rule didn’t want rid of them at all, however to the London Passenger Transport Board they were a problem, and not necessarily for the reason you might think. In 1870 an act of Parliament determined that when a company built a tramway, then they assumed responsibility for the upkeep and maintenance of the whole roadway on which the rails were laid. In the short term this was a good deal for both sides, as it made tramways far more attractive to the individual boroughs that had the final yay or nay over whether the tramways were allowed to be built. The first fully operational electrified tram services in London ran from 1901. By the late 20s and early 30s, a large amount of London’s tram network was old, and would have needed huge investment to replace. Not only that but London was growing, and the cost of building new tram routes would have been hugely expensive compared with the cost of making a new bus route. Considering the expense of costly road maintenance, and also the view that trams were a major source of traffic congestion (which was later proven to be untrue) the LPTB began a process of decommissioning its trams and tramways – although this was prolonged due to World War II.

As I see it, trolleybuses had a major advantage over London’s trams, in as much as they didn’t rely on rails. Not being trams, this also meant that London Transport didn’t have to pay for the whole maintenance of an extensive road network. They had a huge capacity or around 70 passengers. When trolleybuses first took to the roads, the maximum capacity for a diesel or petrol engine bus was 56, and there were performance issues with both.

Recently bought Matchbox Model of a London Trolleybus

So, in the trolleybuses – and it is believed that London had the largest fleet of them in the world at one time – London had a public road transport system that was capable of carrying large numbers of passengers, that was more cost effective in the long run than trams, that people liked, and that was environmentally friendly. So of course, it had to go.

Although the decision to scrap London’s trolleybuses seems like madness now, in 1954 there did seem to be some sense behind it. Remember – being environmentally friendly wasn’t even really a concept in the 50s. In 1947, the Government nationalized electricity. This meant that London Transport could no longer generate its own cheap electricity. At one time trolleybus drivers were not paid as much as diesel or petrol bus drivers, but this ridiculous state of affairs ended and that raised costs, to the point where it was no longer cheaper in real terms to run trolleybuses than diesel buses.

In addition to this, improvements in technology meant that the trolleybuses lost their performance advantage over diesel buses, whose capacity to carry larger numbers of passengers increased. It’s interesting that the decision was pretty much concurrent with AEC unveiling their prototype Routemaster bus. One school of thought says that LT had put so much money into the development of this iconic bus, that they had to scrap something for the Routemaster to replace. The current fleet of RT buses weren’t 10 years old yet so it wasn’t going to be them. It is true that diesel buses gave you the opportunity to change a route much more easily than trolleybuses. Trolleybuses also needed a turning circle at the end of their routes – you can see one such outside Uxbridge Underground station.

That’s trolleybuses, then. Will they be back? There was a wee bit of media fuss in 2012 when a new Routemaster was decked out as a trolleybus to consider the feasibility, but I don’t know that much ever came of it. There are currently no trolleybuses operating in the UK apart from within museums. There are over half a dozen 2^nd generation urban tramways in the UK. I’ve been to quite a few European cities with second generation tramways, but only one with a trolleybus system – Kaunas. Who knows, though? In 1980, who’d have believed that we’d ever see trams in the UK outside the tourist trams in Blackpool?

Me n' Matchbox - A digression

 I’m going to go off on a little tangent here. There is a tiny bit of painting involved, but blink and you might miss it. If you’ve spent any great amount of time in my blog – and I certainly hope you have – you’ll probably have worked out that trams and buses, trains and London are amongst my list of loves. When I was a kid, probably up until when I left primary school, I was very fond of toy cars as well.

There were 4 main manufacturers in the early/mid 70s. There were the Brits – Dinky, Corgi and Matchbox, then the US giant that was going to topple them all – Hot Wheels. Dinky were great because they made fantastic models based on Gerry Anderson series like Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. Corgi also did some very cool Film/Tv tie ins – the James Bond Aston Martin DB5 – the 1960s batmobile, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to name but 3. However these were all larger models – Christmas or birthday presents, not to be purchased with pocket money.

Up to 1968, Matchbox – by Lesney – were the most successful die cast car manufacturers in the world. Since 1953Matchbox largely produced faithful models of a wide range of mostly UK motor vehicles. The range expanded until it comprised of 75 models, and old models would be discontinued, and replaced by different new models. In 1968, though, the US toy giant Mattel launched hot wheels. A chap called Elliot Handler came up with the idea after playing with matchbox cars with his son. Apparently his wife Ruth was sceptical. She did actually know a thing or two about toys, having created the Barbie doll over a decade earlier, still, I digress.

The real key to Hot Wheels’ success was in putting the emphasis away from realism, to exaggerated or invented designs, with very wild and colourful paint jobs, and wide tyres which made them perfect for racing on polyurethane tracks, which they also marketed.

By 1971, most if not all of the 75 Matchbox models now came with what they called ‘superfast’ wheels in response to Hot Wheels. Also, the range began to include exaggerated and even generic designs, clearly inspired by the Hot Wheels ethic. Corgis responded too with their ‘whizzwheels’. Of the three, Matchbox were always my favourite. The Corgi cars I had all had plastic baseplates, and felt insubstantial compared with a Matchbox car. I have a brother a year older than me, and a brother a year younger. It was my younger brother who received a Hot Wheels track with a couple of cars in about 1970, and I thought they were rather insubstantial too , although not as much as Corgi. Their axles bent too easily for my liking.

It wasn’t only that. With Christmas money one year in the early 70s I bought a Corgi Rockets polyurethane race track. As I recall, it came with the Saint’s Volvo car, which had a base with the axles and wheels which you could remove with a key and put onto another car. Why you would want to, I have no idea. Compared with my best Matchbox cars, its performance on the track was still rubbish.

The track came with a rather weedy plastic clamp which never worked brilliantly and was soon broken. However I improvised a clamp and starter from my Meccano set. For an encore, I also built a contraption which turned my basic track into a loop the loop. This impressed my father no end. He seemed totally unimpressed when I’d constructed all of the models in the book which came with the set, but when I went off piste, as it were, he was all over it. So, of all my cars, no Corgi ever came close to completing it, and the only cars to make it were the Lamborghini Countach, which did it once, and the Maserati Bora, which did it every time. Which put it high in my affections, for sure However, my favourite of all was Blue Shark. It was no great shakes on the loop, but I loved that car, and even today, if you showed me a photograph of number 61 Blue Shark my heart would quicken in response. Ahh.

So, to cut to the chase, I loved my toy cars, and Matchbox were my favourite, I’m sure you got that. Right, ell, I’ve been sitting at my desk at home an awful lot over the last twelve months, and a random thought occurred to me looking at the shelves in front of my desk, crammed with books and various what have yous, and also my painting of a Swansea tram, which has never been for sale. It suddenly occurred to me – wouldn’t it be nice to have a model of a London tram? A thought which was swiftly followed by – I wonder if Matchbox ever made a London tram? So, I looked on ebay, and what I found was described as a ‘Matchbox style London Tram’ It looked pretty clean, in pretty good condition, and pretty damn cheap. So I bought it.

Thing is, though, a act like that, for a lot of us, is only the first link in the chain. My tram had a banner advertisement for Typhoo Tea. A little research revealed that Matchbox had made a tram – looking similar, but advertising the News of the World. This was one of the first set of Matchbox’s Models of Yesteryear, which began in 1956. This model was produced from 1956 to 1963. I found quite a load on ebay, and this one was very reasonable. So I bought it.

Being a nerd is not a fairweather thing. You have to put the hours in. So I did a little research, and found that although it has nothing marking it as Matchbox, it was produced in 1985, as a one off promotional for TyPhoo tea, who were celebrating their 80^th birthday. If you look in the photo, they look extremely similar. Despite there being 20 years between them, the metal bodies, the main part of the tram, could have been made by the same mould, or tools, or however they make them. There’s no plastic on the original (News of the World) tram that I’ve been able to find. Even the wheels are metal. With the 1985 tram, the baseplate is plastic, and a slightly different shape from the metal plate on the original, which says ‘Made in England’ as opposed to ‘Made in Hong Kong’ on the plastic one. The plastic wheels on this one don’t work as well as the metal wheels on the original. The roof of the TyPhoo tram is also made of plastic, and although it is very similar to the original, sone of the details on it have slightly different proportions to the original. The only decals on the Typhoo tram are the side banners, while there are other decals on the original, a couple of which you can see in the photograph.

They look rather a treat on my shelves. So much so that I thought to myself – hmm, I wonder if they do any nice London buses too? So when I saw this pair on ebay (other auction sites must be available although I’ve never heard of them) going for a snip. I put in a speculative maiden bid, and won.

Now, I will come clean and admit that I thought I was buying Type B buses – I’ll say more about that later. However when they arrived, something was bugging me. Then I realised what it was. The Type B London Bus only has 4 windows along the side. These buses are definitely longer. The writing on the base plate is very small, but a little bit of research revealed that these are in fact Type S Buses. Not as well known as the earlier Type B, the Type S was used from 1920, being bigger and having more capacity than the type B which dated back to before the First World War. They too were part of the Matchbox Models of Yesteryear series. The Schweppes version is slightly older and was produced for a couple of years from 1982. For a while after that it came advertising Haig Whiskey, then in 1988 advertising Rice Krispies. Production ceased the following year. These are very nice models. They’re in very good condition, and look as if they’ve never been played with since they were removed from the box. (Which is a little bit sad, mind you). The scale is bigger than the typical matchbox models. They’re nicely detailed, but the top deck seems to be completely made of plastic, which is a little bit of a shame. 

Buy one or two trams and buses, and you’ve got one or two. Buy 4, and you’ve got a collection starting. And the problem with that was, that once I’d researched the London tram ad bus models that I had, I learned about London tram and bus models that I hadn’t. I mentioned the Type B Bus earlier. Another toy brand that I held as much love for as Matchbox was Airfix, and Airfix made a model kit of a London Type B Bus, which I never bought, but used to ogle in the Airfix catalogue. So it’s always been a little iconic to me – I even painted a watercolour of one once.

Research revealed that a B Type bus had also been an original Model of Yesteryear. A search on eBay brought up this: -

The appeal was that the B type itself was in basically sound condition, although missing its driver. The cosmetic condition wasn’t brilliant, but nothing that I couldn’t tackle. More than that, though, it also came with a late 1960s Matchbox Routemaster. Ropey condition mind you, but nonetheless, it’s another iconic London bus for the collection, which was essentially a free gift since it was the Type B I was buying. I did as little repainting work as I could, having matched the very dark red that Matchbox used for this model. Then I bought a set of decals from the web – more expensive  than both buses, but since I’d paid very little for them this wasn’t a bad deal. I applied the decals, and this was the result: -

I am stupidly, ridiculously pleased at the way this has turned out. It doesn’t look mint – I left a few chips in the paint, but I do think that it’s come up well, and I think it’s a lovely wee thing. As for the driver and steering wheel – well, we’ll see.

I haven’t touched the Routemaster yet. As it is, on the shelves, turned round so that the side with the remaining decal shows it doesn’t look too desperately bad. In the future though it will really need a respray and a new set of decals. Sadly, a previous owner has applied the front and much of the sides with a cote of matte red, which isn’t even a match for the tone of the original. In the mid 60s this Routemaster was number 5 out of 75. However an earlier version of this came out in 1954, just one year after the first 4 Matchbox cars. It’s different enough that I’m very tempted to buy one if the price is right. As for the bus itself, well to me, the Routemaster will always be The London Bus. Throughout my childhood, and for long after I left London the mighty 207 Routemasters plied the route between Uxbridge and Shapherd’s Bush Green, a staggeringly long journey which took about 3 weeks if memory serves me correctly. Then there was the 65 from Ealing Broadway to Chessington Zoo (before it became the World of Adventures).

I firmly believe that most of the pleasure in collecting, and pretty much all of the pain, comes from completism. The desire to have a complete set of, well, whatever it is you’re collecting. In my case, it’s Matchbox London Buses and trams.

I have to be honest, I really didn’t realise that Matchbox had made so many. I’m only interested in collecting the smaller scale models, so I get to rule out Superkings and the like. Even so, I found out that I need at least the following: -

Models of Yesteryear London Horse drawn bus. This one came out in 1959  and ceased production in 1966. They’re not uncommon on eBay, but you get what you pay for. If you want one in decent decorative order, complete with both horses still attached, they’re not as cheap as I’d like. It’s a must have though.

London Trolleybus Matchbox no. 56. This came out in 1958 and was produced until 1965, several years after the last trolleybus ran in London. The trolleybuses were phased out a couple of years before I was born, but I clearly remember visiting the London Transport Museum when it was temporarily based in Syon Park before the Covent Garden museum opened. I could not believe the size of the trolleybus – they were monsters with no fewer than 2 rear axles. I’ve drawn a trolleybus in Kaunas, but not painted one yet. This is another must have.

Daimler Bus Matchbox no. 74. This bus was made from 1966 to 1971. For the first couple of years it was in cream and then green livery. However for the last couple of years of production it was also available in London Transport livery. I’d like to have one, but as it’s a more modern bus I can’t say I’m losing sleep over it.

The Londoner (Daimler Fleetliner) Bus Matchbox 17 This is a model of the type of bus which plied the E1 and E2 routes while I was growing up. I always pigeonholed them as ‘square buses’ and they never earned the affection that people had for the Routemaster. This model stuck around for a while, with various versions being produced from 1972 – 1981

Leyland Titan London Bus Matchbox 17 To be honest, at first glance there really isn’t much difference between this bus and it’s predecessor, the Fleetline. It has to be said, though, that this one really had staying power. With a number of variants in decals etc. there was still an MB17 London Bus Leyland Titan being produced in 1996, with it finally being discontinued in 1997.

Models of Yesteryear 1920 Preston Tram London Transport Livery. This came out in 1988, and was produed for the next couple of years. To be honest it came out in quite a number of different liveries, but I’d like to get hold of the LT one. Frankly, I would have thought that 1920 was too early for a tram to be branded London Transport. Nonetheless, I’d like one if I can get it.

Busy Week

 Well, it’s been a bit of a busy week. The story so far. I’m a full time English teacher – which I’m not apologising for, it’s not a crime. (yet) Now, we’ve been teaching from home since the middle of December. There are occasions when I’ve taught in school, which is still open for the children of essential workers and particularly vulnerable children, but for the most part I’ve been at home. This does not mean that my time has been my own during school hours, though. Making a meaningful remote learning lesson can involve lots of things – making a ten minute video, and editing it, for instance, can take over an hour. Then there’s sitting at the computer, answering questions, giving advice, marking work during school hours.I’m not asking for sympathy, but I’m using it as an explanation of why I was so eager to paint in this last week. This has been half term week. Normally, during this half term I go sketching aboard somewhere. This time last year was my very last trip, when I went to Reykjavik. A year before that it was Stockholm. Well, there was no trip this year, obviously, so I was glad to use the free time to produce three acrylic canvases – the 3 wild west pictures from my last post.

Prior to that, though, I’d been painting this series of vehicles in ink and watercolour, and more recently making timelapse videos and tutorials of the process for my Youtube Channel. I can easily make one of these in an evening after working hours, you see. But last week, I was spending easily 6 or 7 hours a day on the canvases, so I didn’t make any more.

Yesterday, though, I made another video, or in fact a pair of them – a short timelapse and a tutorial of this VW Karmann Ghia. The painting stage of this one was not without its traumas – if you go to my Youtube Channel you can watch it if you like.

Karmann Ghia Tutorial Youtube

Karmann Ghia Timelapse

Selling my work is not my primary motivation, but I won’t deny that it is nice when it happens. Within about half an hour of posting my first wild west picture I had sold it, and then later in the week I sold two of the earlier vehicle pictures. That means that I’ve sold almost all of those earlier ones.

I’ve also had a commission to paint a horse racing scene in acrylics. This will have to wait until next weekend for me to make a start with it – I have just about all the materials I need except time. I’ve also started my next pair of videos – an E type jaguar – but I haven’t filmed the painting stage yet.