One Sketch #120) Del Boy

Effervescent he (that means bubbly)
My opinion of the show?
Lubby jubbly.

I may have mentioned this before, but just in case I haven’t, let me start by saying that my ‘day’ job, as it were, is that I’m a teacher in an 11-16 Secondary School in South Wales. Not an Art teacher, no. I have no qualifications in Art at all. I do, however have a Postgraduate Certificate in Education – a PGCE, which is one of several qualifications, any of which enable you to teach in the UK. I also have an honours degree in English, so that’s what I’ve spent a little over 30 years teaching. Today (Monday) and tomorrow are the last two days of this academic year, after which we have a break of just over 5 weeks until the new year begins.

I know that the long summer holiday for teachers is a bone of contention. I may come back to this before I’ve finished this post. Still, once you get to the last couple of days, a much more relaxed attitude sets in. For one thing, attendance takes a nosedive. My first class today is usually one of my more ‘challenging’ classes. (translation from teacher speak –challenging = bloody awful)There were just 4 of them in school. On the principle that Art has charms to soothe the savage beasts, I gave them each a piece of paper, and told them about my challenge to make at least one sketch a day for a whole year, and showed them some of the pictures on this very blog. I asked them if they had any suggestions for what I might do for today’s sketch. One of them suggested a V12 Dodge Charger. Now, okay, I don’t have anything against sketching vehicles in general, and cars in particular. However, this just didn’t really light my candle. Then another of them suggested Del Boy. This surprised me a little, but it does at least show the lasting affection for the series “Only Fools and Horses”. I mean, these kids surely weren’t around when even the last Christmas Special was broadcast. 

There’s a couple of things I remember with great affection. I remember in one episode when Del’s father turned up from Heaven alone knows where, and Del, very much against the old rogue, described him with the memorable phrase “He sold his soul for half an ounce of Old Holborn!” Both my younger brother and I fell off our chairs laughing at that one, since we had often used such a phrase to describe our own father. Long story. 

When my kids were a lot younger, the only family holiday we could afford was taking the 26 hour bus to Calella in Spain, and staying in a ‘2 stars and lump it’ hotel. The drivers had a deal with a transport café somewhere in the south of France, and would stop there at stupid o’clock in the morning on the way there, and stupid o’clock in the evening on the way back. Well, the last time we took most of the kids must have been about 2005. The bus happened to stop while it was halfway through showing the 2002 Christmas Special of Only Fools and Horses. There was a mutiny. Seriously, all the passenger refused to get off the bus until the DVD was finished, even though these later specials weren’t really as good as the series had been in the 80s. Just my opinion, feel free to disagree. Finally, in 1985 I took my then girlfriend, who has been my now wife for the last 31 years, to meet some of my extended family in Brighton. As we were walking out of the station, who should we pass in the street? None other than David Jason. Sir David, I hope that you appreciate the way we smiled and nodded, but didn’t ask for autographs, or stop you to talk to us, or jump up and down shouting OMG it’s Del Boy etc. 

Hmm, I'm burbling again. I might say something about holidays tomorrow.

One Sketch #119) Llanelli Town Hall and Llanelli Library

Even under grey and glowering clouds
Such civic buildings still stand tall and proud.

So, yesterday I was out and about making a couple of direct watercolour sketches of Kidwelly Castle. Not quite so far west is the town of Llanelli. It's a interesting place. The most sizeable town between Swansea and Carmarthen, it has its fair share of impressive civic buildings and chapels which have survived for over 100 years - even if, like most towns, it has some rather crappy modern ones as well.

I decided to go back to have another go at line and wash with these. Unfortunately the particular pens I used, unlike my Faber-Castell favourites - ran when I applied the watercolour. I think that the Library especially is actually better than it looks here. For some reason my scanner sometimes has problems with colours, and here it has accentuated the greys, and hasn't given the actual tone values of the browns. Compositionally though I rather like this as a page. My Spanish sketching adventure is coming ever closer, and if I can aim to produce pages like this in my sketchbook , then I won't be unhappy.

One Sketch #118) Kidwelly Castle

I never will begrudge
Spending some hours
Sitting, painting these
Kidwelly towers.

There's a couple of reasons why I took it into my head to drive West for the best part of an hour to Kidwelly, west of Llanelli. Well, one reason, really, that is mighty Kidwelly Castle. However, there's two reasons why I decided to paint it today.

Back in 1991 I had only the two children - my oldest daughter, and my son. I passed my driving test that year, and my father in law was kind enough to give us his old Ford Fiesta. This proved to be a terrific little car which did us proud for four years. One of the first trips I took the kids on was to visit Kidwelly Castle. Mikey can only have been about 3 and a half, but I remember the trip with great affection, and I've taken each of the kids there at one time or another.

It isn't just lingering affection which drove me there today, though. For Kidwelly Castle was where I made one of my first ever attempts at a line and watercolour wash picture. I thought I'd see how far I've come in just over a year. So here's the original I did in 2017:-

Well, it's all in the eye of the beholder, and you might say, well, of course this older one doesn't look as good - it's a photo, not a scan. Well, here's the on the spot photo I took of one of today's by way of comparison.

Now, I'm very sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, that's case proven.

Sketching Tips 8) Sketching Vehicles

I don’t think there’s any special skill involved in sketching vehicles, but maybe what makes a difference is whether you like vehicles for their own sake or not. For example, there’s a world of difference between a sketch which has cars in it: -

And a sketch of a car: -

In the top picture it’s the footbridge which is the star. The cars, which are not particularly detailed and not brilliantly drawn, are just there to give the footbridge context and scale. In the second picture, the street furniture, the wall and the car behind are just outlines, which serve to highlight the car itself which is the star of the picture. If the cars are just a background feature, then you really don’t need many lines to suggest the shape of a car to the eye of the beholder. 

So, when you’ve decided that the car – or tram, bus or train – is the star of the picture, what then? Well, the first thing you need to think of is composition, and what I mean by that is, where are you going to put the viewer in relation to the vehicle. I’ll give a couple of examples to help explain this.  In this picture :-

- you can see that we, the viewers, are looking down onto the Bubble Car. This is appropriate, since it helps emphasise the diminutive size of the car which is one of its most interesting features. By the same token in this picture,

we’re looking up at the train. Our eyeline is roughly level with the bottom of the door nearest too us. This, and the rather extreme perspective serve to emphasise the train’s great size, power and speed.

Once you’ve worked out the viewer’s viewpoint in relation to the vehicle, then it’s worth spending some time deciding just how you’d like to contextualise the vehicle. I’ll explain that. Both of the vehicles above appear on the page themselves without any background. That’s because in those pictures I’m only interested in the qualities of the vehicle itself, and didn’t feel the need to contextualise them. However, adding background can help your sketch say more about the vehicle, and it’s not a bad thing to spend a bit of time considering just how much background, if any, you want to use. For example:-

The very light foliage in the background of this beautiful Jaguar XK120 conjures up an image of driving down summer country lanes with the top down. On this next picture:-

the railings and shaded shoreline are just enough to place this ice cream van at the seaside. With this Swansea tram:-

- I felt that the edge of the platform, the passengers and the pole carrying the cable overhead were enough to contextualise it. This can be compared with :-

Where I really wanted to include all the background details to help put it within a place and time within my childhood. This picture isn’t about the train so much as its about my memories of using the Tube, taking it to interesting places to see and things to do.

With this sketch, if you take away the airport buildings then it’s just a single decker bus, so the context is important to this sketch.

As for sketching in the vehicle itself, as with anything else you sketch it is a matter of looking, looking, looking, of getting the shapes right, and applying the shade in the right amount, in the right places. It sounds simple when you say it like that. Yet it needn’t be that complicated either. If you decide to go for a heavy contrast between areas of light and shade, you can end up with something like this:-

It's an effective depiction of a tank engine, even though the train itself really wasn’t a very complicated sketch, having so many areas of complete shading.

Of course, if you use more subtle shading, then you can make what looks to be a more accomplished sketch. This one underneath is not actually that well drawn – the front end of the boiler for example just isn’t quite right, but it still looks pretty good, I think, partly because of the amount of platform detail, and the contrast between the dark underside with the wheels, and the more lightly shaded boiler. 

Of course, if you’re feeling really confident and have time to really work at the sketch, then you can go to town on detail.

If you were to strip away the careful shading, what you’d be left with is still quite a complicated sketch, but nowhere near as complicated as it looks.

For me the attraction of sketching and painting steam engines is that they put a lot more of what they’ve got in the shop window than other types of train, or road vehicles. Look at even a rather simple tank engine and you’re still going to see pipes, domes, handles, and all other kinds of interesting bumps and protruberances.

Going back to my earlier point about viewpoint, you’ll notice that with each of these the viewer is looking up at the train, albeit to a slightly lesser extent than in the diesel train above. 

A few random points:-

·       When you’re sketching a car, bus, tram or train perspective and viewpoint are every bit as important as they are when you’re sketching buildings. If the viewer is looking up at a vehicle, this emphasises size and power, which can be enhanced by exaggerating the perspective more than normal.

·       You can always choose not to sketch in any background to the vehicle. However, if you just sketch in outlines of the background it can give the vehicle a context, while at the same time highlighting it.

·       Even really complicated vehicles, like steam locomotives, can be simplified through the use of areas of total shade, leaving you with a very simple set of outlines to sketch. Careful use of various gradations of shading can really give your sketch depth, body and definition.

One Sketch #117) Lunar Module Airfix Kit

Mine never would quite land upon the Moon
The closest that it came, my living room.

I probably don’t need to explain this one, but what the hell, I’m going to. Exactly 49 years ago today, a Lunar Excursion Module, named Eagle, landed on the Moon, and shortly after the landing, Neil Armstrong, swiftly followed by Buzz Aldrin, became the first men to step out on the surface of the Moon. As I said, I have sketched and painted Buzz Aldrin walking on the Moon during this one sketch challenge, and that means I’ve written about it before. So you already know about how it captured the imagination of the 5 year old me, and I’ll always be grateful to my parents for getting us out of bed in the middle of the night to watch the landing live on telly.

The sketch shows an Airfix model of the Lunar Module. Airfix were – are – a company that made moulded plastic scale models in self assembly kit form of a wide range of things. Most popular were probably military aircraft from World War II onwards. But during the early 1970s, they also made models of various spacecraft. My older brother had the massive Saturn V rocket. This contained a small lunar module which fitted into one of the top stages. I had the smaller Saturn 1B, which I think was used for the Apollo 9 mission which tested the Lunar Module in Earth orbit. This model also had a tiny lunar module in it. I also had the Soviet Union rocket which was particularly good value since it came with both small Vostock and Soyuz capsules. My favourite, though, was the 1/72 scale model of the Lunar module, sitting on its own small circular Lunar surface, together with two astronaut figures – Neil and Buzz, obviously. 

I could get quite nostalgic about Airfix. I doubt that every boy in the 60s and 70s was into Airfix, but I’d imagine that the majority were given a kit at one time or another. The airplane kits themselves could be very tricky, especially if you were trying to produce a model of, let’s say, a world war II fighter plane, with moving propeller and retractable moving wheels. There were other companies who also produced kits. Revell are an American company who produced a similar range of models. I didn’t mind Revell, but I think that we always had this snobbish attitude that Airfix kits were better because Airfix were a British company. I also recall a Japanese company, Tamiya. The interesting thing about Tamiya, if I recall this correctly, is that they were producing models that neither Airfix nor Revell were. A slightly later entrant to the market during the mid 70s was Matchbox. This was a British company at the time, although it has since been bought by Mattel, I believe. They were primarily known for their die cast replica cars and motor vehicles. In the 70s they produced a range of kist, which were notable for being made from more than one colour of plastic. For example, their first model which I believe was the Alpha Jet had parts in red plastic and parts in white plastic, which meant that it still looked quite striking even if you didn’t paint it. However, I digress.

Going back to the landing itself, it’s funny to reflect on what we thought was going to happen next. I remember reading a book about NASA’s manned space programme at the time, and that it said that following the Moon landings, the next step would be a manned landing on Mars, however, being as this involved travelling a far greater distance it was likely that this would not happen for at least 10 years! I confidently poo-poohed this as defeatist nonsense at the time. Shows how much I know.

It’s tempting to ask whether we might ever have gone to the Moon had it not been for JFK’s assassination. Originally the Apollo programme was supposed to consist of at least another 3 landings, all with heavy scientific programmes. But when push came to shove, although each of the 6 successful Apollo landings did carry out important scientific experiments, the real main purpose of the programme was achieved when Armstrong stepped onto the Moon’s surface, that purpose being beating the Soviet Union to land a man on the Moon. This certainly seemed to be the prevailing view of the public, as viewing figures dipped for each subsequent moonshot, apart from the drama of Apollo 13’s near disaster. 

Will we ever go back to the Moon, or finally make the trip to Mars? In the very long term, I think it’s extremely likely. I think it’s likely that we’ll go back to the Moon eventually because in relative terms it’s so close. We already have the technology to get there – we had the technology 50 years ago, and if we just take the field of computers, you could install a computer many times more powerful yet many times smaller and lighter than those used by the Apollo craft now. As for Mars, I tend to think that if we could do it more cheaply than we could do it now, then we would do it now. Will it happen in my lifetime, though? Well, I have my doubts. If we take the Moon programme, it took pretty much a decade from the start of the Mercury programme to the Eagle’s landing. If we started a serious Mars landing programme today. It could easily be well over a decade before the vehicles and procedures were fully developed , tested and ready. And we aren’t starting a serious Mars landing programme today, we won’t be starting one tomorrow, and nobody really knows when or if we ever will.

One Sketch #116) The Prince Regent

After Thomas Lawrence

A Prince he was
But when he had the chance
To be a husband too,
Well, he was pants.

I couldn’t resist this one. In another life, 11 years ago, I played in the UK’s highbrow quiz show “Mastermind”. If you’ve never seen it, the contestants – called contenders for the purposes of the show – nominate a specialist subject to be quizzed upon. Each in turn sits in a black interrogation chair for two minutes and tries to answer questions on their own subject. After each contender has done this, they return to the chair in turn for another two minutes to answer general knowledge questions. The contender who has answered the greatest number of questions correctly wins. Well, it’s a tiny bit more complicated than this, but that’s the gist. For my semi final appearance I chose “The Prince Regent – later King George IV” as a specialist subject. Today, 19^th July, is the 197^th anniversary of his coronation. 

George’s Coronation was one of the more eventful in British history. As Prince of Wales, George rightly had the reputation of a terrible spendthrift, gambler, womaniser and generally a drain on the country’s resources. It didn’t help that this was all happening at the same time as revolution in France. He did make an illegal marriage to the Catholic widow Maria Fitzherbert in the 1780s – a marriage invalid in British law due to the Royal Marriages Act. However in 1795 he was faced by an ultimatum from his father, the King, that he must make a suitable marriage to provide an heir in order for the King and Parliament to clear his debts. The Prince faced the selection of his bride from the suitable European protestant princesses, and remarkably he delegated the selection to his current mistress, the Countess of Jersey. She in turn selected probably the least appropriate person ever to be married to a man like George, his own first cousin, Caroline of Brunswick. 

Caroline’s mother was George III’s favourite sister. The younger George was not the least bit attracted to Caroline, probably, one would think, because she resembled him physically, being relatively short, overweight with a propensity to obesity, and possessed of the Hanoverian slightly bulging eyes. Reputedly he asked for a medicinal brandy immediately upon seeing her for the first time in the flesh. The plausible story is that he slept with her on their wedding night, and never again. Whether that is true or not, Caroline very quickly became pregnant with their only child, Princess Charlotte.

Very soon after the marriage and the birth of Princess Charlotte it was clear to all that they were leading separate lives, a fact which soon became official. George went so far as to accuse Caroline of giving birth to an illegitimate child. The subsequent enquiry seemed to disprove this, but it did establish that Caroline’s behaviour had become as wild and sexually indiscreet as her husband’s. King George III took over the care of Princess Charlotte. With access to her daughter severely restricted, the Prince of Wales also saw to it that Caroline was socially excluded. People who attended her parties could expect to never again be invited to the Prince’s far more lavish and prestigious entertainments.  Eventually the Foreign Secretary of the time, Lord Castlereagh offered Caroline an annual settlement in return for her leaving the country. Caroline moved to Italy, and never saw Charlotte, who died in childbirth in 1817, again. She only  learned of Charlotte’s death from a visiting courtier, since Prince George was determined not to tell her the news.

There was no question of getting a divorce while King George III was still alive, even though the Prince, who was Regent from 1811 until 1820, had effectively assumed all the duties of the King. When George III died though, George IV immediately set out to obtain a divorce from Caroline. Even for the King this was an exceptionally difficult thing to achieve, requiring an Act of Parliament. Caroline, pushing her luck, had returned to the UK on George III’s death, intent on being treated as the rightful queen. By the law and ancient custom of the land, Caroline had become Queen on George’s accession, and she was determined to assert her rights to the title’s privileges. Caroline proved immensely popular with the London masses, primarily one suspects because they thought that anyone so hated by the hated George IV was worth supporting, rather than through her own intrinsic qualities. Jane Austen herself said as much. This convinced George that he would fail to obtain his divorce through Parliament. 

George had his revenge, though. He declared that Caroline would be barred from his coronation, on 19^th July 1821. Caroline actually made several attempts to enter Westminster Abbey on the day, but each time she was turned away by guards and officials who had been specially posted on the King’s orders. Eventually she was forced to admit defeat. Almost as if she was acting according to a prearranged script, Caroline took ill that very night, and died within three weeks. As per her instructions she was buried in Brunswick, in a coffin with a simple inscription referring to her as “The Injured Queen of England”.

When you read about historical figures such as George and Caroline, it can be difficult to remember that these were real people, real human beings with real human feelings. It’s very easy to feel very sorry for Caroline, and she does deserve some sympathy, to an extent. Only to an extent, though. Caroline, once it became clear that her husband was no longer going to be a husband to her, didn’t shrink into the background and meekly accept her lot. She decided that what was sauce for the gander could be sauce for the goose as well, and this at a time when different moral standards were applied to the sexes. Yes, both a husband and wife if they were rich and privileged enough could choose to take a lover, but woe betide the lady who sought to flaunt this like a man could.

While on one hand I admire Caroline for going her own way and not just accepting the raw deal that this arranged marriage had offered her, I really rather think she made her own bed with her actions after George became King. We can’t really know Caroline’s feelings about her daughter Charlotte, and how badly she was affected by their separation and Charlotte’s tragic death. But after Charlotte died, in many ways the life Caroline had between 1817 and 1820 was rather enviable. She had been given a generous annuity. £35,000 a year is enough to live on now. Back in the 1800s it amounted to a fortune, and not a small one at that. In return all she was expected to do was stay out of the country, stay out of George’s life, and try not to embarrass herself or him too much. While one can understand that the realisation that she had now become Queen might have certainly made her think again about her situation, the idea that George would ever even accept her as Queen, let alone allow her to be crowned such is a display of hubris, or at the very least an inability to see things as they really were. She’d accepted Castlereagh’s deal in the first place, and breaking its terms in this way was never going to bring success. So I find it difficult to be sympathetic towards her in this last year of her life.

As for George, I find him a fascinating and very contradictory character. He was a wilful man for all of his life a man for whom his own ego and wants were his own little god. He was a persistent debtor, to whom the concept of living within one’s means was unknown. For example, he squandered huge amounts on his white elephant Royal Pavilion at Brighton, while people starved to death in different parts of the country. He was very vain, and sexually incontinent. Normal behaviour for the Prince would be at the very least described as sexual harassment in the present day and age. As the young Prince of Wales his behaviour during his father’s first bout of dementia in the 1780s was disgraceful. As a friend he could be extremely disloyal. Prior to becoming Regent his closest political friend was the radical MP Charles James Fox. Immediately on becoming Regent, George dropped Fox like a hot potato, and revealed his true, reactionary colours. As King his attitude to the relaxation of laws against Roman Catholics was particularly reprehensible. His attitude towards his wife, whom he viewed, at best, as a baby making machine, and whom he discarded as soon as she had fulfilled this function, is rightly condemned. 

And yet.

This is in no way an excuse for George’s faults, but the fact is that he did contribute to the lasting cultural heritage of the United Kingdom. For example, he had a large hand in the genesis of the institutions that became the British Museum, the British Library and the National Gallery. For such an infuriatingly self-centred and wilful person, he had great taste. Certainly in terms of art and literature, if not in architecture. Despite her personal antipathy towards him, Jane Austen still dedicated “Emma” to him, while Sir Walter Scott stage managed his triumphant visit to Scotland as King. Even in terms of architecture, while the Brighton Pavilion might not be everyone’s cup of tea (I personally love it) his patronage of John Nash resulted in the building of Regent Street, one of the most elegant streets in the whole of the capital.

One Sketch #115) John Wayne (Wednesday 18th July)

He had staying power
That's a fact
A constant superstar
(Who needs to act?)

You might be wondering why I painted John Wayne for Wednesday’s sketch. After all, he’s another movie icon, but I painted the first two – Laurel and Hardy, and Marilyn Monroe whole England were playing in the World Cup, but the World Cup is now well and truly over. Well, the fact is that I had cast around for suggestions whom I should paint should England reach the finals , and the Duke was a suggestion I really rather liked.

Which is odd. For I have never been anything that could even remotely be described as a fan. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I hated John Wayne – I didn’t – but it’s a little complicated. 

It all stems from my father. A lot of blokes born in the 30s and 40s – my Dad was born in 1940 – loved Westerns as a genre, and John Wayne in particular. With my generation, it was different. For a lot of blokes who were born in the 1960s, I’d guess it was space stuff and science fiction. After all, I was 5 years old when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the Moon for the first time, and that made a huge impression on me. I was 12 or 13 when Star Wars hit the UK, and that also made a great impression. So I can understand the affection my Dad’s generation had for the Western genre, I just never felt it myself. As for John Wayne, well, I don’t want to upset anyone, but I don’t think he was the world’s greatest actor, for all that he won the Best Actor Oscar for “True Grit”. For the record I rather enjoyed that one. 

Whenever I was in the same room as the old man when he was watching one of Wayne’s films, it always struck me that he was playing the same character in all of them, which was probably what he was like in real life. But looking back, I guess that this is the point. A huge number of people liked that character, and didn’t tire of seeing it in film after film after film. I did read that John Wayne stayed in the top 10 box office stars for the best part of three decades, which puts pretty much anyone else you can think of to shame.