#30x30DirectWatercolor Challenge - 1) Rock Lobster

Okay, if you were around last year you may recall I participated in the 30x30 watercolour challenge in June. I've embarked upon it again - it's a day late, granted, but there we are. This cute lobster took about 30 minutes. Why a lobster - well, it helped fulfil the prompt on Sketching Every Day today. Y'ere 'tis

One Sketch 322) Umbrellas

Est-ce qu'il y a
Quelque chose aussi jolie
Q'une femme francaise
Avec parapluie?

Prompt on Sketching Every Day today - simple as that.

One Sketch 299) (Friday 18th January) Photo Portrait Prompt

Look at my face

And see the beauty

of the commonplace.

This does exactly what it says on the tin. The prompt for yesterday was to copy one of a number of photographs provided on the site. I like the photo of this chap, and since it's a wee while since I tried to paint any kind of portrait I thought I'd have a go. Not too bad.

One Sketch 282) Featured artist Fernando Botero

How wonderful

How calm, serene,

How beautiful, how wise you are

You'll always be the same to me

Whatever shape or size you are.

OKay, so today's prompt was the work of featured artists Fernando Botero. This is a watercolour and watercolour pencil attempt to copy is own reworking of Leonardo da Vinci's Monda Lisa. I like it. Well, Fernando Botero's, I mean. This copy of it is a bit pants, although the photo of it does it not favours. Trust me, the scan of it looked even worse. I'd probably have been a bit better off trying to render it in acrylic, but there we are, pushed for time a bit today, and to be honest I was feeling a bit crook. My wife's mother and stepfather are staying with us until the 8th January, and my wife and her mother are both suffering from viruses (should that be viri?), and I'm starting to feel the onset of it myself. Fear not though, I have no intention of not completing a sketch of some kind tomorrow, even if I don't get round to actually posting it tomorrow. 

One Sketch 272) Elf myselfie

Santa's little helper
Ain't so flippin'
Little

You'd like an explanation, perchance? Today's prompt on Sketching Every Day was to sketch yourself as an Elf or Fairy. Tempted to go fairy, but decided on elf in the end.

One Sketch 269) (Wednesday 19th December)I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - Rockwell

I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus
I wouldn't really mind
But Daddy has been in the nick
- Serving five years' time

That's not very seasonal is it? Sorry. Yesterday's prompt on Sketching Every Day was to depict a holiday song, and I recalled seeing the Rockwell picture which this one tries to copy. Bearing in mind my experience of a couple of days ago I made this one into a card just in case the need should arise during the next day or two.

One Sketch 261) Featured artist Alexander Millar's Pals

Yes, I too am that sort of chap
Who favours the wearing of caps

Suggested by today's Sketching Every Day Prompt. I wasn't previously aware of the work of Alexander Millar, but I really love his style and his sense of humour.

One Sketch 252) The Little Tramp

While Chaplin remained at the helm
So often he would overwhelm
With slapstick, with cheek
Such laughter he'd wreak
He ended a knight of the realm

Not a lot more to say - always been a fan. His silent shorts were often showed on British TV when I was a kid. Very complex and interesting personality too - at one time banned from re-entering the USA. Ungrateful sods.

One Sketch 251) The Great Stoneface

The thing I would say about Buster
- apologising for my bluster
With each new decade
The films that he made
Just seem to take on greater lustre.

At a bit of a loss today, so decided to paint this quick monochrome portrait of a comedian I have a lot of time for, the great Buster Keaton.

One Sketch 223) Sepia tone tram in Kingsway tram tunnel

I do like trams
I'm just that sort of bloke
I wish I'd seen them
Trundling in the Smoke.

I made a sepia toned painting of an old Swansea tram some weeks ago to christen my new studio (or spare room, to use the technical term) and I was really pleased with the results. So I decided to make a companion piece. I've been working on an acrylic painting of a London tram for weeks, and so I decided that this quick piece was going to show a tram in my own home city. The Kingsway tram tunnel was rather unique for the UK. It's a cut and cover tunnel which was exclusively built for single ecker trams, to link the northern and southern London tram networks. As you can see , they did eventually use double decker trams in the tunnel. Part of the tunnel are still there, which is how I came to read about it in the first place, since it features in several works on disused stations of the London Underground railway - go figure. What remains is now grade 2 listed. The last trams passed through in April 1952.

One Sketch #173) Moise Kisling

He's been reading this book

Since 1910

He must be wondering

Where will it end.

Prompt from Sketching Every Day today - something inspired by artist Moise Kisling. So I copied this from his 1910 work, Young Boy Reading. Not brilliant, is it? Sorry Moise. 

One Sketch #167) Geraint Thomas

I've sometimes been told
That yellow can mean more
Much more than gold

We're up to letter G then in my homage to my adopted country. Geraint Thomas is, quite simply, one of South Wales’ greatest ever sportsmen. In the summer of 2018, Geraint won the Tour De France, becoming not only the first Welshman to win the world’s greatest cycle race, but also the first person ever born in the whole of the UK to win it. Previous British winners Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome were born in Belgium and Kenya respectively. Geraint Thomas is from Cardiff, and in August many thousands of people came to Wales’ capital city to welcome him home.

One Sketch #166) Hitchcock and Kubrick inspired by Clifford Bailey

Watch their films,
And you will always know
The mark of these two men
Who ran the show.

Yes, another prompt from sketching everyday. Both of these are based on portraits by the American artists Clifford Bailey. Hitchcock's skin in my picture is far too yellow and orange, which is a shame. The Kubrick isn't bad, though. I sketched this facing the other way from the Bailey original.

One Sketch #164) Ewenny Pottery

I do love cats
I have to say
-even if they're made
of clay.

E is for . . .Ewenny Pottery. Ewenny is a village just outside the sizeable town of Bridgend in South Wales. It is home to Ewenny Pottery, the oldest working pottery in Wales, dating back to 1610. For the last 200 years it has been run by the Jenkins family, who still run it today. Ewenny Pottery are known for some highly distinctive pieces, such as their trademark cats, and the many handled jug in the sketch.

One Sketch #155) The End of the Rainbow

At the end of the rainbow
Light unravels
And drops from the skies
As music

Right, this was another prompt from Sketching Every Day. I had the idea of the rainbow arching out of the mouth of a brass instrument, like a trumpet or tuba. Then suddenly that became a saxophone, and I thought it might be more fun to go with a fictional player. Well, the only fictional saxophone player who came to mind was Zoot, from the Muppets. I'll be honest, I was never really a huge fan of the Muppets but I did think Zoot was rather cool - and many, many blokes my age liked Waldorf and Stadler, the two hecklers, and I liked them as well.

One Sketch #132) Clown

Why is it
That we take such a pride
In the idea that clowns
Are all sighing, and crying
And dying
Inside?

Yes, yet another Sketching Every Day prompt. I actually did two for this prompt - the second one, coloured, is a direct copy of a Norman Rockwell cover illustration for the Saturday evening Post, in HB pencil watercolour and watercolour pencil. The top one is from a photograph which was part of an old advert for Schlitz Beer, which I believe is a popular intoxicating beverage from the United States of America.

What is it about clowns? When I was a kid I actually really rather liked clowns. The couple of times I went to the circus, or the many times I watched Billy Smart's Circus on television, my favourite acts were always the clowns. Yet now, I find them rather sinister. What is that all about?

Partly, I suppose, due to the television adaptation of Stephen King's "It" - Tim Curry was rather brilliant as Pennywise. Partly lingering memories of the Joker in the Batman comics when I was a kid (mind you, this was offset by Cesar Romero's dreadful Ronald McDonaldish interpretation of the character in the Adam West TV series). Partly, I guess because in the media and popular culture we've been fed the notion of the sad clown crying on the inside in popular culture for a long time. It surely goes back beyond Cecil B. DeMille's film "The Greatest Show on Earth". I guess also it's maybe because of all the make up and the clothing. Anyone hiding their true face behind that makeup could be up to anything.

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 #128) Hay Cart

Time accelerates.
Years ago it moved
No faster then the hooves
Of a horse
Tethered to a farmer's cart.

Yes, another prompt from the Sketching Every Day group on Facebook. Looks appealing, doesn't it. And that from me, who think of myself as a confirmed city boy. I like the effect of the blue grey shadows beneath the cart.