St. Fagans Museum of Welsh Life: Sketches

3 sketches made during a (cold) visit to the St. Fagans Open Air Museum of Welsh Life at the weekend: -

Aberystwyth South Gate toll house

Oakdale Institute

Gwalia Stores

Daily Sketch - King George V

I haven't made a charcoal sketch for the best part of a year, and so got the charcoal out today. This is the result : -

King George V - charcoal on paper

I think I must have forgotten how much I like working with charcoal.

Daily Sketch: Mumbles Tram

Alright - confession time. I have been away all day and literally have not had the opportunity to make a sketch.

So this is the second of two sketches that I made yesterday (Saturday 20th)  in another part of the museum in Swansea. This is an old Mumbles tram, I would guess from the first couple of decades of the 20th century.

Daily Sketch - Open Lilies in sepia ink pen

This is the same vase of lilies I sketched last week on the 10th. They've opened quite a bit more today. I was on baby sitting duties today so really didn't have the opportunity to get out to create a sketch, so I decided to use this familiar subject to make a sketch. There are some grey highlights on the flowers themselves which I did with an ordinary graphite pencil.

Small Canvas - Blackpool Tower and Tram

Second take on a Blackpool balloon tram, but the first on a small canvas, and the first with the Tower in the background. Here it is: -

Blackpool Tram and Tower

Small Canvas - class 52 'Western' Diesel Hydraulic in Paddington

There's no doubt about it in my mind, diesels are easier to paint than steam locomotives. It's all in the wheels. Here's the painting: -

Class 52 'Western'

I say it as shouldn't, but I don't think that this is at all a bad painting. It's a nice companion piece to the Deltic I painted a few months ago.

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I received a very nice email from the gentleman who bought this painting: -

It's always nice when someone likes your work enough to want to purchase it for themselves, and even nicer when they take time and trouble to tell you that they like it. The gentleman in question informed me that this was a number 12 tram, and the scene was in Cathcart Street. He lives there now, and has commissioned me to paint the street for him.

Small Canvas - Swansea Tram

Yes, another small canvas of a Swansea Bay Tram. Again, the scan does no favours to the painting - what it has done to the pale blue sky is nobody's business.

Swansea and Mumbles tram
Acrylic 5 x 7 n

Small Canvas - GWR Locomotive

I sketched this one out yesterday, and painted it in one session this afternoon.

It's another small canvas, and I have to say that I'm quite pleased with it. Comparing it with my very first acrylic painting, I think you can see some improvement: -

I include the Deltic painting in the comparison as well because that's one of my favourite paintings I've produced, and I think that the steam locomotive is comparable, and that's apart from the similarities in the palettes of both paintings. OK, painting isn't a competition, but all the same it's nice to think that you're getting better at what you do.

Small Paintings of Port Talbot: Pages DIY

OK - here's the sketch we began with :-

Pages DIY preliminary sketch

Now here's the finished painting: -

Pages DIY - finished painting

Quite enjoyed this one. Basically it's a nice, unassuming Art Deco building which I would imagine is pretty much contemporary with the Plaza cinema, which is literally about 500 yards away along the same street. When I first moved to Port Talbot it was a Vauxhall car showroom, but in the words of Samuel Goldwyn, we've all passed a lot of water since then.

Small Paintings of Port Talbot: Taibach Rugby Club

I live on the main road from Port Talbot eastwards towards Margam, and so maybe this is the reason why the road I live on has more than its fair share of interesting buildings. I've already pained the Plaza cinema, and the sadly demolished Customs House. I've also sketched out the British Legion and Taibach Library. A few yards along the road from the library is another impressive building, Taibach Rugby Club. Here's my reference photo I took last weekend: -

Taibach Rugby Club

- and here's my sketch onto canvas: - 

Taibach Rugby Club sketch - 5x7in canvas

When will I paint it? Not sure, but watch this space. 

Small Paintings of Port Talbot

Here's the original sketch of the Customs House: -

Customs House - Eagle St. Port Talbot

Here's the finished painting: -

I'm not saying it was a spectacular building - it wasn't. But hopefully from the painting you can at least get an indea of it's generally pleasing proportions and why I think it's the sort of building that leaves our town a little poorer  now its been demolished and replaced.

Small painting of a Deltic

Here's the original sketch onto the canvas: -

English Electric Class 55 Diesel Locomotive

I worked on the painting last night, and here's the result: -

Deltic - finished painting

There's always things you can find that you don't like about your paintings, Still, I do think that if you put this one alongside my first ever acrylic painting, of a steam engine, then there's reason for saying that I'm improving. In fact, let's do that: -

Now, the steam train isn't awful. But it is rather naive. I haven't yet learned to work with acrylics, the draughtsmanship, especially on those horrendous driving wheels, is not good. I haven't learned anything about blending colours together. If you look at the deltic painting, the foliage in the background is better than anything I could have done 6 months ago. Look at the steam in both. There's not a lot in the deltic painting, but what there is, arising from the middle of the locomotive, is so much better than anything in the first. There's also the fact that the steam train was painted on a larger canvas than the deltic.

Project: Small painting of a Deltic

We were asked in the rugby club quiz last week - who might have been interested in a Deltic? Being an old trainspotter I knew that this was literally the most impressive class of diesel locomotive ever used on a British railway. Generally I like steam engines far more than diesels, but I think that Deltics had something special. See what you think : -

English Electric class 55 Deltic

When I was a kid in the mid - late 70s I used to go to Kings Cross on the tube just to see Deltics.

Well, I will admit this is just a little cynical on my part, since I know that there are a lot of other rail enthusiasts out there. Every time I make a tram picture, it sells. Here's hoping the same magic works for trains.

Small Paintings of Port Talbot

I had two small canvases left untouched. Well, there's a challenge, I thought. So I sketched out this,

Pages DIY store

It's literally about a hundred yards down the road from where I live. Page's DIY story isn't an architectural marvel, but I like it. I guess that it's contemporary with the Plaza cinema, from the Art Deco features of its exterior. When I first moved here it was a Vauxhall car showroom, but that was quite some time ago. Not especially fancy, or showy, but the sort of building you might ignore which is easily worth a second look.

Small Paintings of Port Talbot

I sketched out another small canvas last night. This is the Customs House - another venerable building which is no longer with us. As the name suggests, this used to be home to the Customs Office for the port. By the time I moved to Port Talbot in the mid 80s it housed offices for Social Services, and indeed I attended meetings there concerning some of my pupils at work. Here's the sketch: -

Port Talbot Customs House

I don't know if you can quite see the curved roof on the far right of the picture, but that's actually the Plaza cinema, which I painted a few weeks ago.

Sadly it seems that the place was either no longer needed by the council, or no longer fit for purpose, and it was sold a few years ago. In the last couple of years a new block has been built - as a gesture the block is called Customs House, and it's perfectly fine - but lacks the impressive qualities of its predecessor.

Small Paintings of Port Talbot Project: Grand Hotel

The nGrand Hotel is the only hotel in the Twon Centre. I'd guess that it was built in the late Victorian/Edwardianb period, hence the mish-mash of styles. Personally I like it, but I know that this sort of architecture has as many detractors as admirers. Here's the original sketch: -

- and here's the finished painting: -

Grand Hotel: Station Road Port Talbot

The Grand is the last remnant of what I'm told was an embarrassment of riches in terms of hotels and hostelries. At the other end of station road a significant number were demolished to make way for the Afan Centre (Shopping Centre) and then later, the Civic Centre.

If you'd like to see the whole gallery of paintings of Port Talbot and District, then click on this link: -
http://artdaveclark.blogspot.co.uk/p/painting-port-talbot-and-district.html

Small Paintings of Port Talbot: Beulah Chapel

This is actually one rare example of Port Talbot getting it at least partly right. It's one of my favourite buildings in Port Talbot, and it was preserved and moved to its present location in the mid 70s when the village of Groes, where it was originally situated, was demolished. At least they saved this octagonal chapel. Here's the original sketch : -

- and here's the finished painting: -

Once again, using yellow does mean that the photos make the painting look far yellower than it actially is. But I won't lie, it's a nice little addition to the collection.

Small Paintings of Port Talbot Project

Juts time this evening to sketch out a small canvas of another of Port Talbot's loveliest buildings, the Beulah Chapel - colloquially, the 'Round Chapel' in Margam. Here's the sketch

The Beulah Chapel

More Small Paintings of Port Talbot

This is the Grand Hotel in Station Road: -

Grand Hotel Port Talbot Station Road

and this second photo is the library in Taibach: -

Taibach Library  Port Talbot Commercial Road

I'm really pleased with this second one, because it's based on a reference photo that I took myself about 9 am this morning. Taibach Library was cut by Neath Port Talbot Council a couple of years ago, but is currently manned and staffed by a group of wonderful volunteers. The building was one of over 600 created through the behest of the famous Scots American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie - this was a later one, having been built in the second decade of the 20th century.

Small Painting : Margam Castle

Here's the sketch I did earlier in the week of Margam Castle. Margam Castle is the name given to the mansion built by the Talbot family, after whom Port Talbot is named. It's Port Talbot's grandest building, and belongs now to the good people of Port Talbot.

Margam Castle

I painted it this morning, and here's the finished painting: -

Finished painting

I think that this and the Vivian Park painting are quite nice companion pieces to the Plaza painting I made last week.

If you'd like to look at all the paintings and sketches I've made of Port Talbot and the local area, then click this link
http://artdaveclark.blogspot.co.uk/p/painting-port-talbot-and-district.html