Ten National Parks

The UK has fifteen national parks:  two in Scotland, three in Wales and ten in England. Today I'm bringing you two thirds of the set.

My friends, clients and, later today, married couple, Jon and Hannah, asked me to come up with illustrations for their wedding reception table plan. They've had happy holidays working through the list of national parks, coming from the New Forest themselves.  Here is their selection for ten tables.

Ten of the United Kingdom's national parks.

It's an ideal project for me - making lists, sketching and then filling a circle. There's wildlife, human structures, wide views and close-ups, lots of weather and a few references to the experience of visiting the elemental edifices of the British Sublime, from lunchboxes to lost gloves.

Dartmoor, The Yorkshire Dales, the North York Moors, the Brecon Beacons and the Cairngorms are left out for now but here we have Exmoor, Snowdonia, the Pembrokeshire Coast, the Lake District, the Peak District, the South Downs, the Norfolk Broads, the New Forest, Northumberland and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs.

I've been to most of them myself, although some may have been in early childhood. I've drifted on the Broads, scrambled up Snowdon, gasped on a South Down and got wet by Loch Lomond. Of course, there are plenty of other areas of land to gasp or get wet but the designated national parks are a great focus. Completing the set sounds like a great holiday plan.

Sketching New Surroundings

How would you get to know a new area? Having seen a move away from Southampton coming for some time, I wondered how I would learn a new place - its layout and routes, its shops and amenities and its history and character.

Well, two months ago, Adam and I moved from Hampshire to Cambridgeshire.

It's a new part of the country to me, so the whole region calls for exploration but first things first - I want to feel that I know the immediate area, the old town of Godmanchester.

Equipped with a new pocket-sized sketchbook, spurred by a need for drawing practice and aided by a run of early rising, I went out on most mornings in August.

A number of houses here date from around 1600 and there are several later periods. It's a dense little jumble and there's plenty of interest. I may not have ticked off all of the most notable sights yet - I'm enjoying tackling them as they occur to me and as I visit new streets and corners.

So there's a body of work growing. I don't know what I'll do with it. As an experiment, I've arranged them over the map. I would be quite happy to keep going and fill the gaps. It's a good way to try different methods but I want them to look fairly similar.

Just a few of Godmanchester's buildings, sketched and plotted. 

Pubs, houses, shops and assorted places of assembly. Godmanchester has given me a good summer project and will keep me busy for a while.

A Morris Border (not Border Morris)

Here's a hearty little project from earlier in the summer, for my morris men in Southampton.

King John's Morris Men wanted a new poster for dancing dates. I thought it would suit a dense border with plenty of details to pick out, taken from dances and songs, along with assorted rural, maritime and alcoholic titbits and ephemera.

Here, because you want to know and because I want to tell you, is a full contents list:

• At the top:
• Roses - for The Rose Tree In Full Bearing.
• Hops - the importance of beer cannot be overstated.
• The KJM badge - a portcullis, representing Southampton Bargate, above water.
• At the bottom:  hollyhocks, wheat, trout and watercress (very small), more hops, tankards and a barrel being rolled out - as in the song Roll Out The Barrel.
• At the sides:  an oak tree (on the right) and an apple tree (on the left, complete with ladder and scrumper), containing...
• Bells - Ring O' Bells usually ends the King John's running order and Haste To The Wedding is included if we feel up to the challenge.
• A shepherd's crook - Shepherds Hey features in several morris traditions.
• Rifles - there are several shooting dances... including Shooting.
• A fair - for Jockey To The Fair and the Hampshire song Taro Fair.
• A mill - for Maid Of The Mill and possibly Milley's Bequest, which I may have misunderstood.
• A ship - well, this covers various maritime references and several shanties featured in the KJM singing sessions - John Kanaka, Sugar In The Hold and many more.
• Piglet - a plaster pig's head - is the King John's mascot, who comes out from time to time to cause trouble among the audience.
• The pony, hound and cow are decorative but add to the rural idiom...
• ...and, for a spread of birdlife, a seagull, falcon, woodpecker...  and the other kind of kite.
• In the centre:  the accoutrements of the morris - a top hat, stout shoes, sticks for clashing, bells for jangling, hankies for waving, the fool's brush and bladder (for tickling and bopping respectively) and our main instrument, the mighty melodeon.

Now, there are several dances that we do but that I couldn't work out how to draw, at least at such a small scale:

Bonnets So Blue, Balance The Straw, Getting Upstairs, Bean Setting, Broad Cupid, Saturday Night, The Vandals Of Hammerwich, Cuckoo's Nest (I should have got that one in), Old Black Joe, Beaux Of London City, Sheriff's Ride, Nuts In May... and whatever Trunkles are.

They all deserve drawing, as do these, although we don't dance them at the moment:
Lads A Bunchum, The Captain And His Whiskers and The Old Woman Tossed Up In A Blanket / The Old Woman Who Carried A Broom.



Look for King John's in the Southampton area and sometimes roving farther.  There are monthly singing evenings and around Christmas there will be mumming and border dancing.  First, on 15th September, KJM is hosting FOLK DANCE SOUTHAMPTON, featuring numerous visiting dance groups in the centre of Southampton and a ceilidh in the evening.

St George's Day 2018

I have only minutes to make my annual post in honour of St. George's Day.

Busy with long walks, printmaking with students, the whirl of the morris, baking, squash, coastwatch and plumbing, I didn't put the time in for my national saint until about an hour ago.

Well, before the day ends, here it is, torn from the pages of the local paper of my mind.

Hooray for England and Saint George!

Caper, Caper, Clash

The year since I took up morris dancing has been long enough only to encounter a fraction of its tradition and lore.  There's a deep mine of colourful customs; a wealth of very specific and subtle differences.  It has linked up titbits of folk history half-remembered from museums and children's books.  I'll be a beginner for a long time.

This week the year's complement of dancing events begins - at least for me.  I'm going to a school hall in Hampshire to see bunch of morris sides from across the south, many of whom I hadn't heard of despite the many events last year.

Twelve morris men... who will know what I got wrong!

I'd like to get the quirks and character down in ink on paper.  Sketching at an event is a laudable aim but not for me and not for a night of drink and dance.  What I like better is a good stint of research and time to think of things to pick out and fit in.

Here's my page showing the sides who I was told may be represented on the night.  I combed through pictures and group websites for the specifics of each group's kit and colours.  The result is a bunch of made-up figures, not real people from photos.

This sort of thing helps me to learn what's what in a complex oeuvre.  I feel a bit more prepared for what I'll see, even if things turn out to be wrong (such as Winchester's eight-foot jig champ).  It's no document, just a cheerful array of ribbons and bells, hats festooned with flowers and tin badges, tabards, baldricks and belchers.



Bonus list:  some of the best names of dances from Lionel Bacon's "A Handbook Of Morris Dances", known as "The Black Book":

Bare-footed QuakerBluff King HalBuffoonCaptain With His WhiskersCurly-headed PloughboyDevil Among The TailorsGallant HussarHunting The SquirrelLollipop ManLumps Of Plum PuddingOld Woman Tossed Up In A BlanketRoast BeefShave The DonkeySwaggering BoneyThree Jolly Black SheepskinsTravel By SteamWalk Of The 2d PostmanWebley Twizzle

Bonfire Night Sparklers

Last Autumn it was conkers that got me excited.  This year it's sparklers.  (Will it be mittens on elastic next year?)

They're probably what I look forward to the most at a firework display and I have fond memories of sparklers in dark, damp back gardens.

First of three linocuts:  three scintillating sparklers.

I had fun producing these lino images of coruscating sparks, harsh but tamed, between bonfire smoke and one's own breath, the sharpness of the sparklers matches the crispness of the air.

Second linocut:  two sparklers and a November moon.

The prints are in three different shapes and on two types of lino (one being quite rough and misty), with aspects of monoprint and a fade from blue to black.

Third linocut:  a single sparkler in a smoky garden.

Having got these together during the week, I had my humble back garden firework party last night, with a full moon, as foretold in art.  They sparkled and went out - a tantalisingly transient pleasure.

The same again but in real life!

I think they're better in print than in photos.

Romsey Cards At Rum's Eg

Just a quick one to say that, as of last month, my cards are on sale at Rum's Eg in Romsey.

You can buy them and then tour the town to identify each piece of the drawing.

Nearly everything in Romsey!

You might not find the hockey stick.

A Flag For Riverfest

Up in time for Riverfest:  my flag at Riverside Park.

Ace local jamboree Riverfest is on tomorrow (27th May) at Riverside Park in Southampton.  Here's the website.

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to come up with a design for a flag!  My artwork has often been about Southampton (see these drawings for a songbook); I love fitting local detail in and I'm all about activities on the water (even if I haven't participated in a while), so it was a perfect job for me.  Plus a flag is a step up from bunting (see my hand-printed bunting for the mayor).

Ideas for the Itchen

The brief:

• a flag
• the S shape of the Itchen
• the bridges
• activities on the water
• the communities either side of the river

I tried a few things with layouts, borders and text.  The bottom right one looked best, albeit without the area names and "Riverfest" and with colours to match Riverfest's existing graphics.

What to put where

Now came the proper layout - what to put where; which of the various little drawings I had tried to fit in where.  The colours were to be applied on the computer, so I drew in black but the green, yellow and pink had to be balanced right.


Here is the list of real things shown or at least represented.

In the river:
Dinghies, a barge, a rowing boat, kayakers, ageing hulks, swans and fish.

The pen drawing

Around the river:
Kayaks, fenders, Woodmill, more hulks, a lifebelt on Cobden Bridge, the railway line, buoys, the marinas, the cycle path, the ancient Cross House, the willows of Riverside Park, the miniature railway, the strange castle house, the ruins of Roman Clausentum, a pear tree (for Peartree Green, up the hill), the Woolston Ferry (the "floating bridge" that was replaced by the Itchen Bridge in the 1970s), a rope and a chain (so nautical), gulls, a dog and a duck.

To the west:
The 1960s buildings of Southampton University (Maths and Faraday), City Gateway ("the fag butt"), one of the gasometers  and St. Mary's Stadium, the mosque and churches (Highfield and St. Mary's (and St. Denys, which I now realise has no spire)) and various generic residential and business areas and parks.

To the east:
The clock tower at Bitterne Triangle (it was originally in the city centre), the Centurion industrial park, the new development at Woolston, the obelisk in Mayfield Park, the towers of Thornhill and Townhill Park and more churches (Ascension and Peartree) and other buildings of all sorts.

In the corners:
Oak, hawthorn, bracken and nettles.

BONUS INCLUSION FOR EAGLE-EYED SPOTTERS:
The flags in the wavy divides either side of the river spell out (as well as they can in only black and white) RIVERFEST and SOUTHAMPTON!

In full colour:  the Riverfest flag ready to print

The final image went off to the printers last week, to be put on a flag of six by four feet.  Today I was glad to see how well it worked blown up from A4 size.  The parks team came and put it up on the flag pole and here I am holding it!

Flying my flag

See you at Riverfest.

A Rose For St. George

I was late beginning work on a piece for St George's Day this year.  It has been a weekend of morris dancing around the Meon Valley in Hampshire, with two sides visiting from Devon.

The jaunt was full of things to draw:  there were bells, sticks, hankies, tankards, hats, tabards, badges, drums, squeezeboxes, pies, cutlasses, hats, ribbons, flowers and a nice green vintage bus.  Saturday ended with songs being shared - oh, and some more dancing.  John wrapped the session up with a song I didn't know called Saint George.  The chorus knocked all my other ideas for six and I even got a little emotional.

For St. George's Day 2017

It became an on-the-morning piece, drawn first thing this morning between getting up and going to Oxford to watch more morris dancing at the Folk Weekend.

You will see featured figures George and Guy, respectively leaping in a jig and playing the melodeon.

Here's that process in full:

• Go over jig videos
• Sketch
• Draw
• Colour
• Drying time!
• Rub out
• Scan
• Whack it on the Twitter
• Dash to the station

Happy St. George's Day!

Clock Tower and NST City

Axis Towers:  my screenprint for a weekend of two tours.

At the weekend I went on two tours in the cultural quarter:  two places that form an axis around Guildhall Square, as shown in this quick print in honour of the two.

First, Southampton's long-talked-about new arts centre.  While the complex will hold a few different arts organisations, the one on show was NST City, the Nuffield Theatre's new venue in the city centre, in addition to the copper-topped wonder remaining up at the university.

It's really a lot grander than I expected and, although it's not finished yet (we were in hard hats) I was impressed by the ambition.  There are two theatre spaces, rehearsal spaces, a bar and café and lots of room for milling about.  It's a full-sized regional theatre and genuinely exciting to see, in advance of its opening later this year.
The entire development, Studio 144, is up for an award (Daily Echo) and it's being talked about in lists of new developments in the art world (The Arts Newspaper).

Being on second and third floor level, overlooking Guildhall Square, afforded views not seen since Tyrrell & Green closed, across to the side windows of the art gallery and council offices.  I got that view in reverse the next day on a tour up the Civic Centre clock tower.  These run one or two weekends most months and can be booked through Sea City Museum.  I won't spoil it too much - there were all sorts of stories.  It's spiral stairs from one level to the next, up to the inside of the clock and then up to the bells.

I've been looking at the clock tower all my life and I've drawn it many times, often trying to find new ways to represent the Civic Centre's many aspects in one image.  Here's one, from a Christmas card design in 2013.

My Southampton card design, with the Civic Centre on the right.

Just a few pictures from the clock tower tour - you can go on a sunnier day and take better photos.

Drawing Alton

Did I mention the set of Hampshire towns that I've been drawing?  Here's a case study of a tricky one:  Alton.

I settled on the format of a 10cm square containing a pen drawing in black and grey.  The idea is to sum up the town or give its highlights, not to present it as a view.  The arrangements are all different - symmetrical, jumbled, in blocks, splayed out...  It depends on what elements I have to work with.

Now for the process:

Research

The page of lists and sketches.

First I need to make a list of things to include:  buildings, statues, activities, symbols, natural features...
I start by scouring a bunch of old guidebooks to England or the south:  I would say "old and new" but they're mostly old or older:

Pevsner's Buildings Of England, the AA Leisure Guide, England's Thousand Best Houses, the Blue Guide to England, the Shell Guide To Britain, the Collins Pocket Guide To English Parish Churches, Here's England (by Ruth McKenney - a real treasure); online lists of follies and hills and fairs and so on.
Then come the books about Hampshire, heritage handbooks, leaflets, photo books and gazetteers.

I am in love with local history websites and photo archives.  Of course, the amount online varies but the information available can be staggering.  I don't know all of these towns and I would hate to misrepresent them.

I'll look at aerial views, OS maps and Google Streetview.  If possible, I'll go for a visit.  The project has kept me supplied with reasons to drive to unfamiliar corners of the county and take photos of wooden signs, cricket games, landmark trees, architectural styles and so on.

The arrangement

The page of layout attempts.

Having sketched the buildings and picked their best angles, it takes AN AGE to make a satisfactory arrangement - longer each time because I want variety.

Once that's done, the dark, grey and light areas have to be balanced.  It's easy to make it all outlines and not give enough depth.

Drawing!

This is by far the quickest part.  I'll sketch loosely in pencil and then begin the ink.  Finally, the pain of making sure I wait long enough before rubbing out, in fear of the much greater pain of smudging.

Here's the result for Alton, with the following elements:

• St. Lawrence's Church, with a reference to the tempest of 1686.
• Civil War muskets that left holes in the church door in the Battle Of Alton in 1643.
• The town hall on the market square.
• The high street of Georgian buildings (it's highlights, not an actual section).
• The railway bridge and an engine of the Watercress Line / Mid Hants Railway (the left-hand arch leads to a pub called The French Horn).
• Hops, a local industry even into this century.
• The Alton Buckle, an Anglo-Saxon artifact.
• The Curtis Museum.
• The unusual war memorial cairn.
• The Assembly Rooms.
• Gliders, flown in the area.
• The pond.

Wondering what I left out?  Here goes:  the new library, the Methodist chapel (converted), the Palace Cinema, the King's Head, the 20th Century magistrates' court, the Museum Annexe and Allen Gallery, the Alton Machine (a type of coach), the river Wey and the legendary Fanny Adams.

Alton in ten centimetres.

London Concert Halls and Theatres

My busy vignettes of London's high culture. 

Who doesn't like an evening out in Theatreland? Surrounded by plush velvet, tassels and gilt or in a forest of acoustically engineered shapes; flapping a glossy programme in the heat; suppressing a cough; fretting that the phone isn't turned off...

Here are the smartest and most prestigious of London's concert halls.  It's only this year that I've managed to visit them all*.  As for the theatres - well, there are scores of them and I got it down to a select ten, including the old and the new, dance and opera, west end, south bank and further afield.

These vignettes are fun to assemble and populate.  I dug deep into the oeuvre of obscure musical instruments for London Concert Halls.  For no reason other than my own initial, they all begin with C:
cittern, chitarrone, charango, clarinet, cor Anglais and crumhorn.  On Some London Theatres it's all scenery and the accessories of theatre-going.  The bust on the plinth is Garrick.

The list of venues in full:

London Concert Halls:
Barbican Centre, Royal Festival Hall, St. John's Smith Square, Cadogan Hall, Wigmore Hall, Royal Albert Hall.

Some London Theatres:
National Theatre, Almeida Theatre, Menier Chocolate Factory, Royal Opera House, Duke Of York's Theatre, Gielgud Theatre, Tricycle Theatre, Shakespeare's Globe, The Old Vic, Sadler's Wells.


* The Cadogan Hall for the Pasadena Roof Orchestra.  I became tearful when they played "A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square".

A Monument To Architectural Folly

My love of a rusticated pilaster is documented.  I can dig a dog-tooth and ogle an ogee.  There is a wealth of obscure words for different shaped bits of stone and each one makes me feel that I should store it mentally in case it comes up in a crossword.

For my final day, for a while, of supervising the art school print room, I made a jolly three-colour screenprint that came out of some happy hours looking through books of architectural details and terminology.  It all came together this afternoon and this evening and all twenty copies came out pretty well.

Drawn and printed today!  A preposterous erection.

The books in question include works by Matthew Rice and Osbert Lancaster, Peter Ashley's "Preposterous Erections" and a King Penguin on the English Tradition In Design.

Here you will find:

Doric columns, interlacing arches, quoins, Venetian windows, consoles, crockets, a lucarne window, Elizabethan chimneys, egg and dart, shield-bearing lions, triglyphs, staddle stones and a crinkle-crankle wall.

That's just the main feature.  The border brings you trefoils, cinquefoils, linenfold, trumpet moulding, ball-flower, volutes and label termination.

Of course, an antefixa would have been a step too far.

England & Sonnets

PART ONE:  Today is St. George's Day!

In honour of my national day, here are seven birds in formation.  The formation happens to be that of the Heptarchy - the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England.  With the exception of the bittern in East Anglia, I don't think the birds shown are strongly connected with the region where I put them.

This is something that I've meant to do for a while:  get to grips with gouache; fill a page with colour; be a bit more graphic.  The draft came out a bit more 1980s and less mid-century.


PART TWO:  Today is Shakespeare's Birthday!

This morning I was talking with friends about sonnets.  I'm not sure that I even studied them at school, let alone learned any, and I never remember the rules.  I looked it up and had a bash, to explain the form by using it.  I'm quite pleased with how my silly sonnet about sonnets came out.


Suppose you wish to set your thoughts in words
But find yourself in need of more than prose.
Love and the dance of poetry go like curds
And whey, deep down each lover surely knows.

But how to find expression that will speak
Your thoughts aloud but also show your skill?
Perhaps you find a soppy rhyme too weak
And haiku's strictures just too quick to fill.

You may in free verse jazzy patterns wind;
Post-modern collage from the phonebook paste;
Stream consciousness unburdening your mind;
But all this may be too loose for your taste.

In sonnets' tidy dance it suits to gird;
Just long and short enough your love to word.

Write me a sonnet!  Correct me about regional birds!  Happy St. George's Day!

Hampshire Trios

I spend a lot of time thinking Hampshire thoughts, compiling snippets of geography and history.  There's a lot of Hampshire that I've never seen.  I'm working on vignettes of a spread of towns and villages.  Here's an example of how things are going.

First, three from the south east:  Bishop's Waltham, with the ruins of the bishop's palace; Wickham, with the Chesapeake Mill supposedly built with timber from the defeated American ship the Chesapeake; and Hambledon, up in the downs, with its cricketing history.

 The second set is the three hursts of the New Forest.  There are more settlements of note but these three fit together well.  Lyndhurst is the forest's capital.  Ashurst, the eastern gateway to the forest, is quite small, being combined with Colbury for administrative purposes.  Brockenhurst has the grandest hotels.

It's a big county.  Wish me luck with the rest of it!

Czech Trek

Destination Litomyšl!  My husband spent this weekend in the Czech Republic, staying in a UNESCO world heritage site, for a conference.  This is for him.

The route was:  London, Amsterdam (one night), Vienna, Litomyšl (three nights), Vienna (one night), Amsterdam, London (one night).

Donderdag to Dinsdag:  three countries in a very long weekend.

Highlights reported thus far include:
Amsterdam:  the mini-Rijksmuseum in Schiphol Airport and lots of Edam
Vienna:  the Esperanto Museum
Litomyšl:  the sgraffito façade of the castle.

Here we have a collage of all three places, with their national flowers, the national, regional and city flags and arms and a few prominent or relevant sites.  The jazzy-before-jazz roof of Stephansdom is irresistible and Schiphol's control tower makes great aesthetic sense, jabbing heavenward in a Dutch landscape.

Plotting The Plot

The crop of 2016.

Fifteen minutes away by bicycle, the allotment is almost completely cleared and covered for winter (the last thing to prune down will be the raspberry canes).

That means that it's time to plan:  what to grow; how to arrange it; crop rotation; a steady stream of produce; what worked and didn't; what I would rather not grow anymore.

What that really means is combing through the tins of seed packets and flicking through the catalogues.


Now I have a plan of the plot, all verified by lengthy pacing-about on site.  Next is to work out what to plant when, and what to start off on the windowsill at home.  Then comes procurement.  It's the onions, shallots and garlic that may need to start before the end of the year.

That gives me time to dig manure in, tidy and weed the messy edges and get my sheds in order.

Planning like this is addictive.  I broke away to translate the excitement into a page of drawings.




Oh, and here is my haul of squashes, now mostly lining my kitchen windowsill.

I look into my near future and I see a lot of soup - but only after a lot of diligent peeling of those fiddly pattypans on the left.

For now, that's shallot!

Autumn Foxtrot

The arrival of Autumn always needs celebrating, so here is a little piece to meet the moment.

I'm the kind of person who, on the first hazy day of September, can't help internally reciting "SEASON OF MISTS AND MELLOW FRUITFULNESS" in a fruity, sing-song (but still crucially internal) bellow.

Blue sloes and red rosehips peppering the banks and hedgerows.

Walking along a tunnel-like path on Warsash Common recently, I started to pick out the bright berries in clusters and sprays.  The pattern became a dance that I had to do something with.  I worked it into a little seasonal paean for the flashes of colour in the hedgerows.

Now that I've got going, I have some words left over - tart, crisp, ripening, rusty, juice-fattened, button-bright and fulgent.  I could spend all day leafing through the autumnal lexicon but I'll stop there.

Two Day Tour

I'm back from two days of driving to see family and friends.  I've thrown an image together (and not coloured it for now) to sum it all up.

In the past few months I've got about in the car a great deal - often on a grander scale and further afield than East Anglia.  This trip, though, was a sharp and strange fling, leaving at 6.30 am on Friday and getting home around 8 pm on Saturday.

I've been everywhere!

I could tell you more stories but none of them are thrilling.  It was a trip of small experiences and you can guess at a few from the drawing!

Vegetable Challenge

Here's an update on the vegetable situation, after a lot of time spent mixing watercolours into shades of green.

Chomp your way through my vegetable array!

What you see here is the highlights from pages and pages of healthy produce - all the basic types that I could think of, including everyone's favourites and enemies.

Your task, dear reader, is to use them all in the kitchen.  Mind the truffle.