One Sketch 287) Aeolus statue

What's he got on his head?
Must be often said

This gentleman here is Aeolus. Today's prompt on Sketching Every Day is Wind Chimes. Well, I gotta be honest, that left my boat unfloated and my candle unlit. Still, I did enjoy sketching the statues as part of my stamp design yesterday, so my imagination did start working on how I could combine sketching a statue with the general idea of wind. This was the best I could come up with.

Aeolus is an interesting character. At some times he is depicted as a man and at other times as a deity- at some times a personification of wind, and at others as the keeper of the winds. He's probably most well known for featuring in Homer's Odyssey. In this he is a man, the keeper of the winds. On his way home from the Trojan War, Odysseus stopped off on the isle of Aeolia (in the Lipari - or Aeolian - Islands off the coast of Italy), after his escape from Polyphemus the Cyclops. After being blinded, Polyphemus cursed Odysseus and begged his father Poseidon, the God of the Sea, for revenge. Poseidon was told by Zeus , King of the Gods, that he may not kill Odysseus, but decreed that Odysseus would not be able to return home until all of his companions were dead, and ten years had passed.

Odysseus stayed for a month in Aeolia, at the end of which Aeolus promised him a west wind to carry him home to Ithaca, and tied up all the other winds in a bag which he gave to Odysseus. This is presumably the bag that the statue is holding. After several days they come in sight of Ithaca. Odysseus, who has vigilantly guarded the bag night and day, falls asleep, and the inquisitive crew open the bag thinking it may contain gifts and valuables. The winds let loose blow the ship all the way back to Aeolia. Seeing that Odysseus was obviously not favoured by the Gods, Aeolus refused to provide any further help. Which is all to the good, since the Odyssey would have been a much shorter poem otherwise.

One Sketch 286) Llandaff Cathedral Postage Stamp

Cathedrals
Stone poetry
and
Music, frozen in time.

The challenge,as you might guess, from Sketching Every Day, was to design your own postage stamp. Well, I'll be honest, I wanted to go urban sketching again today, and so I took the opportunity, and just added the Queen's head, 1st, and perforations after making the sketch. I like Llandaff. It's a nice area to be anyway. Claim to fame? Well, apart from the Cathedral, it was also where Roald Dahl grew up, unless I'm very much mistaken. The green statue is actually outside the cathedral, but not in that position, and the Madonna and Child are in the interior.

One Sketch 285) Eltz Castle

The stuff of fairytales
Made flesh
and bones
In stones
And slate.

This is Eltz Castle, a real place, rising above the River Moselle between Trier and Koblenz in Germany. Now, today's prompt in Sketching Every Day is castles. Well, one thing we're not short of in wales is castles. However I've sketched and painted several Welsh castles before, so out of perversity I decded to say stuff it, and go for something from a bit further afield. When I found a couple of photos of Eltz Castle I knew that this was what I wanted to go for.

Right, I'm a firm believer in being honest about your own work. Without being destructive, it's important to be able to look critically at aspects of your work you'd like to improve, and to admit it to yourself. The other side of the coin is to allow yourself to admit it when you've produced something you're happy with. And I have to say that I'm really happy with this. I exaggerated the perspective of the castle buildings, leaning inwards to point up at the sky, and that's given me an effect that I like. More than that, though, is the use of colour on the buildings. As usual my scanner hasn't really quite done the original justice, but it's a good enough scan that you can see what I did with the brown and violet merging on the buildings, and the blue and violet merging on the mountains. This is approaching how I'd really like to be able to use colour on urban sketches and is much closer to what I admire in some other urban sketchers. Yay!

One Sketch 284) The Secret Life of Butterflies Zine

The Secret Life of Butterflies

Each is a MASTER of disguise

each is a Ninja Glider

and loves to drink rough CIDER

They love to go to Discos

and fly to San Francisco

They knock on People's doors

- and when they sleep, they SNORES!

Basically, if you fold a piece of paper into 8, and cut it in the right place, you get a wee booklet of 8 pages which we can call a zine - from magazine, I'm guessing. I didn't come up with the idea. The nonsense rhyme on it, and the pictures, now, they're mine. I've loved butterflies since my youngest children were very little - about 20 years now - and so this was what occurred to me. The butterfly in the pages is based on the Peacock (Inachis Io) which is my favourite species.

One Sketch 283) Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl

Grand Pavilion Porthcawl
Home to the Porthcawl panto
Oh no it isn't
Oh yes it is
Oh no

Yes, another urban sketch from Porthcawl. This is certainly one of Porthcawl's most notable buildings. It was opened in 1932, and built in ferroconcrete, like the original Wembley Stadium, and details of its art deco styling do remind me to a certain extent of the old place. I grew up just a few miles from Wembley and used to go there to Wembley market every Sunday morning.

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 281) Sidoli's, Porthcawl

You scream
I scream
We all scream
For Ice cream.
(Not when it's so flippin' cold though.)

Yes, dearly beloved, on the last day of the calendar year it seemed only fitting for me to make another urban sketch, since that's really where we started, isn't it? The building on the left is Sidoli's café n Porthcawl. Sidoli's have been famous for several generations for making what has a claim to be the finest ice cream in South Wales.

Yes, I'm sure that you can see the influence of Ian Fennelly - I'd have been doing something wrong if you couldn't.