#30x30DirectWatercolor2018 Caerphilly Castle

Yes, sorry, I know that I've already posted today. But I can't help it - I feel so useless at watercolor that I just couldn't help posting having produced a direct watercolor that I think isn't actually at all bad. I went to Caerphilly today to paint the largest castle in Wales. This is what I came up with:-

Considering that the only thing I used to draw lines was the paintbrush itself I'm really quite pleased with this.

One Sketch #69) #30x30watercolordirect2018 Margam Park Stag

I stand before you,
When all is done and said
Defiant, proud and tall
Don't you think my head
Looks far, far better
On me, than on a wall?

Yes, I'm afraid that I see myself using my watercolor direct sketches as my daily sketches for the time being. Let's look on the bright side, though. This specific challenge ends at the end of this month, and at the rate I'm going, there are going to be days when I'll make more than one watercolour - yesterday for example - and days when I won't make any, so there will be some ink sketches coming this month, I'm sure.

As for this choice, well, while I was in Kaunas in April I visited the Zoological Museum - where I sketched a coelacanth - and one thing I didn't like about it was a room literally full of mounted deer heads and antlers. As the verse says - I think they look far better still attached to the living animal.

One Sketch #68) #30x30 Direct Watercolour 1 - Spaghetti Bolognese ingredients

Put these things together
Then reveal
My version of a classic
"British" meal.

Yes, today is the first day of the 30 day 30x30 Direct Watercolour challenge I posted about a week or two ago. You can see that I sometimes use watercolour on my ink sketches, but I've never sketched directly just with paint like this. I quite like it.

One Sketch #67) Ibex

It cannot be too hard to cope
With the fact I'm not an antelope
So would you people please take note
Misnaming me really gets my goat.

Yes, I felt for variety's sake I ought to pick something other than a Swansea building to sketch for today, and so I came to settle on the ibex. Why? Well, I'm a long time quizzer, and the ibex is one of those creatures where people almost always get the wrong idea about what it is. If you ask people what sort of mammal is an ibex, I guarantee that the majority, if they answer at all, will call it an antelope. Yet it's a goat, and when you look at it, it is hard to imagine why anyone would think that it's anything else.

One Sketch #66) Mount Pleasant Baptist Church

A place of quiet prayer
And of peace
Transplanted to South Wales
Via Ancient Greece

Yes, being as it's half term week and Swansea is literally on my doorstep, it's another sketch of an interesting Swansea building for today. I look at the portico of the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, and more than anything else I'm reminded of the original Tate Britain Gallery in London.

One Sketch #65) Mumbles, Swansea

The pier's still closed
And that's a shame
But at least there's ice cream
All the same.

Took my grandson all the way to Mumbles, which is about half an hour down the coast from Port Talbot, only to find that Mumbles Pier is still closed for renovation. It was the same story last year, and I have to say - what's on it which takes so long to renovate. I mean , it's just a pier - no buildings to speak of apart from the lifeboat station, just a boarded platform reaching out to sea.

One Sketch #64) Urban Sketching in Swansea

Although not every building
Is of very great renown
There's much to see
And much to sketch
In our ugly, lovely town.

Bank holiday Monday, and having returned from visiting my parents in Worthing I was itching to get out and about with my sketchbook again. I bought a new pack of pens, and was champing at the bit. Beautiful weather in Swansea today, and now that I'm sitting back in the house I'm feeling a bit burned again.