London Bridges

I've had a problem with the 30x30 challenge this week. Just not been feeling it, I suppose. And this, mind you, despite having just bought myself a new set of my favourite Winsor and Newton watercolour paints. I flatter myself that you can see the difference in the couple of pictures I've made since (10 and 11). These are numbers 9, 10 and 11 (which by my reckoning puts me five pictures behind. By no means out of the reckoning, but falling dangerously behind.)

9) Goldfinch

10) Street Music

11) Old Coach

I'll be honest, it's only these last two that I've done so far this year that I tend to like at all. Still, soldier on. 

I've had an idea for a follow up to my Monopoly series of sketches. It works like this. I love London, right? I love bridges, right? So why not do all the bridges in London that cross the River Thames? I've already sketched a few in the past, but I really want to do the rest. So, not working in any particular order I start with the oldest surviving bridge across the Thames in London, namely Richmond Bridge.

This rather gorgeous stone bridge to me looks like the quintessence of Georgian elegance. It was built in 1777 to replace a ferry service. In order to repay the investment tolls were charged, which actually lasted until 1859. Talk about long-term pay offs. It was the 8th bridge to be built across the Thames in what is now the Greater London area, but the seven earlier bridges were all demolished, making it the oldest. I used to go ice skating regularly in the old Richmond Ice Rink. I'd take the 65 bus from Ealing Broadway on Sunday afternoon, and walk across the bridge then along the towpath. I think that the ice rink has gone now, but at least the bridge, which is grade 1 listed, remains. 

30x30 Direct Watercolour Challenge 2024

Okay, let’s have a quick recap. Direct watercolour pictures are made with just watercolour on paper, where you make the picture with no preliminary design or sketching in any other media. Every June there is an internet challenge called the 30x30 challenge. Those who choose to undertake the challenge have to produce 30 direct watercolour pictures during the month of June – the equivalent of one picture each day. I have undertaken the challenge in 2018, 2019, and then every year since 2021. I’d like to think that, if you take the set of pictures as a whole, each year has seen me improve somewhat. My favourite pictures are a couple I produced in 2022, even though my most lucrative year was 2021 when I sold more of what I produced during the challenge for more money than before or since.

But making money, while nice, isn’t the point. First and foremost is just completing the challenge, and second and secondmost is doing the best that I can in a medium I still struggle with, but I do enjoy and I’m trying to get better with.

So I have begun the 2024 challenge. Today as I write it is the 8^th and thus far I’ve made 8 pictures. Here they are

1)   Black Grouse. If you live in the UK you will be aware that there are a number of satellite and cable channels that are part of the Sky group, owned by the Murdochs. One of these is Sky Arts. Currently I’m watching an excellent series on the channel called Painting Birds with Jim and Nancy Moir. Jim Moir’s fictional alter ego is Vic Reeves, a very popular and successful comedian in the UK over the last four decades. However, Jim himself is an amateur ornithologist and a very talented painter. Wife Nancy falls more into the enthusiastic amateur category – not unlike myself. In one of this series Jim painted a black grouse, to provide the inspiration for painting number 1 this year. The results are a demonstration of the foolishness of using very cheap watercolour paper.

Stonehenge. The film Spinal Tap means I shall always think of this place with a glottal stop in the middle of the name – Stone’enge. Last year I began with a couple of paintings of well-known places and I’m still at this stage of the challenge trying to get my hand in.

Hammersmith Bridge. Right, following last year’s challenge I carried on into the summer painting some direct watercolours and these were based on old black and white Victorian and Edwardian photographs of various professions. Hammersmith Bridge bears an unusual and rather macabre place in my family history. My 3x great grandfather, walking across it on his way to work one morning dropped dead from a heart attack. The story made the local paper and they had an inquest in The Dove public house. I liked the combination of penny farthing bicycle, early motorized bus and guy in a sidecar.

Motorbike filling up in flood. Yeah, it’s not the most snappy of titles, although it pretty much means that the picture does what it says on the tin.

It was at pretty much this point in the week that I was really starting to suffer from the worst virus I’ve had since Covid. In fact this has been worse than Covid which made me feel slightly grotty as I recall, but I had a really mild case of it.

5)  

Walls Ice Cream Man in Acton. Walls is now just one small band under the huge Unilever umbrella. They were originally makers of sausages and pies in London but diversified into ice cream to help out in the summer when there was often a lull in the sausage and pie business. In the early 1920s they opened a factory in Acton (now part of the London Borough of Ealing, and where my Dad came from.) Incidentally, my Dad always said that the best ice cream from Acton was Tony Bros. As a Hanwell boy myself I thought Rossi’s of West Ealing was the best, but he swore blind that Tony Bros was better.

6)  

Crested Tit. I had fallen behind because I was so ill that I couldn’t paint at all on Thursday. I received an unexpected cheque on Friday morning and as if that wasn’t enough good fortune, my oldest daughter invited me to go to Hobbycraft and The Range with her. While in the Range I bought an A6 Winsor and Newton sketchpad. My thinking was that I could use this, with its 170 gsm paper and being that much smaller I would offer me the best chance of catching up. And it did. Immediately after this one I completed

7)  

Chaffinch. The Crested Tit was the subject of the latest Painting with Jim and Nancy. During the show we saw a chaffinch too, and I was very taken with the little feller. I’ve painted some of the birds in this series but I have to be honest this is by fa the best bird paining I’ve done for some time

8)  

London Trolleybus. Still working at A6 scale with this one.