One Sketch 336 - Featured Artist Erik Abel

This one I'm quite prepared to share
My copy
Of a multicoloured bear.

Know nothing about Erik Abel, but he was today's featured artist om Sketching Every Day, and so I found the original f this which I copied, after a fashion.

Tomorrow in the early hours I' off to Stockholm for a few days, so don't be surprised if the next few sketches turn out to have a distinctly Scandinavian flavour.

One Sketch 335 (Saturday 23rd) JAcobs Antiques Cardiff

There's loads of antiques there
On every self
I can't say much
I'm pretty old myself.

First sketchcrawl of the year that I've been able to attend in Jacob's Antiques market in Cardiff - yeah, I know, Cardiff again.

One Sketch 334) Route 66 Gas Station

Get your kicks
On Route 66.
Shame about global warming.

Yes, the prompt for today was Route 66. What else could I do other than an American Gas station?

One Sketch 333) Hippo

Whenever I've been with a hippo
He's never afraid to let rippo
Each gigantic fart
Is only the start
-Be wary of giving him lippo.

That's terrible. Why a hippo today? No idea, other than some days you just know are going to turn out to be hippo days - no point resisting it.

One Sketch 332) (Weds 20th February) Fleet Street

City of Smoke
Frozen in monochrome
Between two wars.

Now you know that I love street scenes, don't you. You might also know that I love Old London - although anyone who says I grew up in Old London is unkind and technically inaccurate. Born in the 1960's, don't you know. I was looking at some old photos looking down Fleet Street towards St. Paul's, and was very struck by the one which I based this sketch on.

One Sketch 331) (Tuesday 19th Feb) Favourite Smells

Citrus, coffee
Roses, bread
What's your favourite smell instead?

OKay, not the nicest sketch I've ever made. The prompt for this one was favourite smells, and rather than do just one I sketched 4 of them.

One Sketch 330) Clement Attlee

Unsung heroes
Don't always come
in Uniform

The prompt on Sketching Every Day today was Dead President ( or Prime Minister). Well, I did consider going down the obvious path with Lincoln or Kennedy, but then I'm a Brit, and their praises have been sung often enough (and in JFK's case, his vices as well). So let's give a cheer for the memory of Clement Attlee. Maybe he suffered by comparison with the colourful and witty Winston Churchill, to whom he was Deputy Prime Minister during world war II. However many people, of whom I am one, would argue that Clement Attlee was a far more effective politician than Churchill - who was absolutely the right man in the right place in 1940, I make no bones about that. Still, it's difficult to make a case that Churchill, had he won the election in 1945, would have done so much for the ordinary person in the UK as Attlee's government did. We would certainly not have had our National Health Service, and it's quite likely that we'd have embarrassed ourselves as a nation trying to hang onto our overseas Empire. Attlee's groundbreaking Labour Government, elected by landslide in 1945, had its share of failures, but considering the almost impossible difficulties they faced, what with the country having been bankrupted by World War II, it's incredible that they achieved as much as they did.