One Sketch 357) (only 8 left to go) Guinness Poster

I'm not fond of bitter, cider
lager, Guinness too
The evening that I downed three pints
I ended on the loo

- shouting downstairs to ask my mother to put some toilet paper in the fridge for me, as I recall. Well that was decades ago, and for all I know it might well have been the ruby murray that I ate afterwards. Still, I've never touched a drop of Guinness since. Well, I don't drink alcohol at all now - that's not from a moral standpoint or anything like that, I just don't like it very much, and I'm to old to do something I don't want to just to make other people happy.

So coming to this, it's a copy of an old Guinness poster. I'd lay odds that they wouldn't be able to make claims like this about the product now, although I don't know, since I'm told that Irish stout is actually a good source of iron. Whatever, the prompt in today's Sketching Every Day was Slainte - and being the Gaelic for good health/cheers etc. Guinness just seemed to suggest itself to me.

One Sketch 262) (weds 12th) Gingerbread Town

Gingerbread's fine
It's taste - superial
But isn't the greatest
Building material

Prompt from Sketching Every Day - gingerbread house. Being the show off that I am, I had to try to go a bit better than  mere house. When I'd finished this it suddenly struck me that this resembled Hogwarts a little. Which sowed a seed for the next day .. .

One Sketch 231) Victorian Engraving inspired Christmas Card

Christmas comes but once a year
The cost is rather shocking
So make sure that you always have
A really massive stocking.

Yes, I'm well into the Christmas card producing season, for the third year in a row. I love Victorian engravings, and I try to use as many design ideas inspired by these as I can.

One Sketch 227 (Weds 7th October) Pineapple

We all have our favourites
Pineapple is mine
Just so long as it's
More apple than pine

Yes, dearly beloved, we were set the prompt on Sketching Every Day on Facebook to draw a fruit, and so I plumped for my favourite fruit, the pineapple. I'd forgotten how much I love pineapple, so on Thursday I took some slices into work to have with my lunch. Absolute heaven.

One Sketch #192) #inktober2018 Day 3 - Roasted - Roasting Chestnuts

I think that you couldn't rebut
The fact that it must take some guts
To stand in the street
And ask folk to eat
Their fill of your steaming hot nuts

The roast chicken route was just too obvious for this prompt. I did a sketch a couple of months back based on a photo of a chestnuts seller from about a century ago, and I did say then that you could still see chestnut sellers with their braziers in the centre of London when I was a young boy in the late 60s. Unless memory fails me, I think that the last time I saw one would possibly have been New Year's Eve 1981.

One Sketch #160) Fred Calleri

There was a young lady called Kate
Who went for a drink with a mate
When offered a gin
She said, "It's a sin
A milk shake? Now that would be great!"

This was a response to the Sketching Every Day challenge to produce a picture influenced by the work of Fred Calleri. Well, this isn't so much inspired by as a very inferior copy. Never mind, it's the second acrylic painting this week, and doing something like this just reminds me how much I love painting in acrylic.

One Sketch #158) (Wednesday 29th August) Quadrant Coffee House Swansea

I don't like booze
Although this may seem odd
To me, a cuppa coffee
That's drink of the Gods.

Out urban sketching in Swansea, and I noticed that this interesting building - formerly a pub called the Quadrant Gate , is now a coffee house. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't like alcohol but I like pubs - after all, pubs are where quizzes take place. However, I can't hide the fact that I do think that another coffee house is something to be celebrated.

One Sketch #150) Tuesday 21st August El Mixto Restaurant

Chinese, Japanese
Or Espanol?
Ah, the agony
Of Choice

Yes, we were faced with the agony of choice in a restaurant with three separate printed menus - Chinese, Japanese and Spanish. It was literally in the shadow of the hospital. The occasion? John was allowed out of hospital. Hooray!

One Sketch #131) Hot Chestnut Seller

Cry your wares
To the streets, my boy
Those who would have you
Still your cry
Would shed no tears
If you were to die
Nor spare a coin
But pass you by.

Yes, it's another prompt from Sketching Every Day. This is a bit tenuous, mind you, since the prompt was Nut Day - yes, today actually is designated Get Some Nuts Day. By whom? No idea.

Anyway, I used an old photograph showing a street vendor selling roast chestnuts. Once upon a time I believe that roast chestnut venders and their braziers were a fairly common sight in our streets in the UK. There were still a few around when I was a little boy in the 60s, as I'm sure I remember one outside a park in Acton once. Mostly though, by that time you were only really likely to see one by the top tourist sites in the centre of town. I don't really know why, but chestnuts seem to have gone out of fashion. I can't say that I recall ever eating one myself - to my mind they looked too much like conkers. 

One Sketch #130) Self Portraits after Shelly Wilkerson

Although, as a selfie sketch
I think it's fine
I really should admit
I don't like wine.

Yes, Dearly beloved - it's another prompt from the Sketching Every Day Facebook group. Today's prompt was to do something inspired by feature artist Shelly Wilkerson. Now, ok, I admit, I was not aware of Shelly Wilkerson's work prior to this. In some ways her work reminds me just a little of the work of the late Beryl Cook. Not in terms of style or execution - they are very different artists in that way - but in terms of subject matter, and of the effect they have on the viewer. A cursory check of Google images shows that a lot of her pictures have people who are, shall we say, not in the first flush of youth, and involve cats and drinking wine.

What I did to make this painting was I used a Shelly Wilkerson original as a guide - like this it had three men on a yellow orange background - two of them drinking wine, and two cats. I tried to be as faithful to the original with the cats and the clothes as my limited skills allow. However I did take three selfies of myself in roughly the same positions as the three figures, and used these to replace the original heads with my own. I did a basic sketch in graphite pencil, painted in the background, cats, clothes, wine glasses and base skin tone in water colour, then added the details and the variations in tone with watercolour pencils. I quite like it, although I don't think Shelly Wilkerson has anything much to worry about if I'm brutally honest.

One Sketch #106) Dolce Gusto Coffee Machine

I'll drink another cup
Its rich and bitter virtues
Will caress my senses
Into wakefulness,
And lo, with a sublime taste
The day begins anew.

This is my beloved Dolce Gusto coffee machine. Alright, beloved is maybe a little strong. I know that there are other brands out there - I've had a Tassimo in the past - which produce coffee which tastes as good. But I do like the Dolce Gusto. This was second hand when we had it, but I tell you what, it don't half make a good cup of coffee. I've never been a tea drinker, me, always a coffee drinker, ever since my Nan got me drinking it when I was small. Back then it was instant, and I'll be honest, I was only really drinking it for the two teaspoons of sugar she used to put into it. Then, when I was about 15, I decided that all of that sugar couldn't be good, and so I gave it up, and forced myself to drink coffee without it. For 3 months I hated every cup, but by the end of that time I realised one day that I was now drinking it and enjoying the taste of the coffee, and that's when I really became a coffee lover. Since then I've graduated from Maxwell House to Nescafe to Gold Blend. Then from Gold Blend to a filter coffee machine. That was better, and I was known to use a cafetiere at times. But nothing. . . nothing I used to use ever produced a cup anything like as good as my Dolce Gusto.