doodles from the recent van trip

After a wet and wild trip to the north of the UK we get home to a glorious Bank holiday weekend for a change - and how welcome was it.. Dr Fred and I spent most of it pottering around the garden and doing nice things like lunch with friends and reading books. I have been drawing - still trying to define my concept for the coming year... it has to be personal to me and meaningful as the whole years work revolves around it!!!

Somewhere in here if you squint there are 2 pairs of shoes the washing up and a bag of rubbish - combo of 2 x timed min continuous line drawings while camping in rain....

I'm finding it difficult to pin down - it needs to take in my love of nature and my love of travel, we've done quite a bit of nature recently but our travel has been limited due to unforeseen family constraints - I do have a lot of historical resources to draw on and next week I'm going to be looking over my past photographs and journals and hope that something jumps out and say YES WHAT A BRILLIANT IDEA!!!!

seaweed and pebbles - doodling on the beach...

Meanwhile I am trying to draw every day, mainly flora and fauna, sometimes odd things to do with our camper van travels, and hopefully the concept will emerge! most of the imagery is just quick sketches to keep in practice - its hard to keep up the momentum without the discipline of college.... so contemplation and reflection... how to marry nature and travel... and make it coherent so I can develop it and make wonderful art!!!

doodles turned into repeat pattern using phone app

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Scotland part 2

The second half of the week continued in much the same vein. We had one rainy afternoon which was actually quite nice to be holed up in the house with the rain lashing the windows. It probably wasn't quite so nice for the two visitors that came on their bikes but they're tough cookies - and its only water- but I did feel sorry for them having to cycle six miles back down the track in the wind and rain, but given Scotland, it wasn't as bad as it could be. The big quest for the 2nd half of the week was to find some deer antiers! The chap that owned the house dropped in to visit - he was a very friendly fella and was chatting about how this was the time of year when all the Stags lost their antlers (he collected them and sold them) so after that we were on the serious lookout. It's always been Fred's mission to find some dropped antlers.... The Monro baggers continued with the mission to bag the remaining three Monros... there is discussion as whet...

Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town. Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now. The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art.... Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...

Funchal

So after three days at sea we finally hit Funchal in Madeira. An escape from the ship, and I have to say it was very pleasant indeed. First of all the weather is really splendid. Especially when you know that everybody else in the UK is suffering grim storms and vile winds.. Over here it is between 22 and 25 degrees is really quite warm. Funchal is a pretty city. It's built on a hill it with lots of lovely white houses with stunning red roofs. In order to get the best of it we walked along the sea front until we got to the cable car and we took it up the hill. It was a really good ride much longer than we imagined and it's quite weird because it goes right through the town - completely over everybody's house... So not only do you get a lovely vista of the bay but you can view the beautiful rooftops and get to look in everybody's gardens and to look at their picnic sets.. clean washing nice plants... scratty b...

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