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Standing with a Pencil & Pad Before we syphon through our National Trust catalogue of illustrations, there is a second phase of picture production from our permanent caravan sited in Ceredigion, Mid Wales. This phase was less productive but nevertheless kept me in tune with Welsh views and sketch pad when time allowed. The seaside village of Borth is where we spent most of our weekends when the kids 'shared' our jet ski – the one I fuelled and they rode until empty of fuel! We now share our static caravan with our children who frequent it more than us with their own kids. The Borth sketches here are literally opportunities I took standing around. As with many of my drawings I put a few pencil lines down on my pad, inking them in when we returned to the caravan. The Ogwen river cottage and Menai Bridge pictures were literally straight on to paper ink scribbles, completed on the spot, whilst roaming the rich landscape of Wales. You can tell these are 'shoot-from-the-hip' scribbles. They are a bit scruffy and less deliberate, but illustrate what can be achieved without labouring over it. One of the blessings of landscape art done 'on the hoof' – no one is checking how accurate you are (unless they drive 100 miles to check if you've done it right!). The portrait painter sets himself an awesome task. You have to achieve a spot-on likeness or folk think…'That looks nothing like him or her'..!! Here below I may well have skipped tricky bits – like folk walking their dogs or ambling along that promenade!!
The number of sketches expanded into a considerable portfolio – the ones that copy well will be posted on here and create a history of our travel throughout the UK. There was a gap in sketch output during my working years in the 1990s, but we will pick up on the late 2000s with a bunch of more recent caravan travels – a time when Gill and I were gifted National Trust membership by our kids.
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