6B Pencils

And a couple of others

 

 

The new hotel project, just around the corner from our house here, is now up to the third level, as you can possibly see from this very quick sketch. The crane may have been positioning one of the large pre-stressed floor slabs which are being made by the concrete firm that Andrew works for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From a photo taken at the time, this records our visit to Skipton, between York and Lancaster, when we visited there in 2008.

 

We had afternoon tea there on my birthday, travelling between Harrogate and Preston.

 

This countryside is the setting for the TV programme "Last Tango in Halifax".

 

 

 

 

One Tuesday morning Spencer and I were in Pukekura Park, as we often are on Tuesdays. He was riding his bike and I suggested he ride the path around the outside of the Fountain Lake while I sketched it from one of the park benches.

 

Here is the result, or as much as I could get done while he went round twice! Big white globes were floating on the water, and at night they are lit up in various changing colours while the floodlit fountain plays. The big red gateway is part of the Japanese Garden on the hillside.

 

 

 

 

 

 Most sketches in this period have been done using the 6B pencils, but on one occasion I thought I had better do a watercolour to keep in practice.

 

So here is the result, a copy of a painting done for a Railways Department poster around 1930 by John Holmwood. It shows Lake Wanaka.

 

 

 

 

 The day after our journey through Skipton, our friends Russell and Pauline Rigby took us to the Lake District, and we had morning tea at a café on the wharf at Bowness-on-Windermere, the port of that Lake.

 

Here is the view from the café window. It was a very grey day, with low cloud, drizzly showers, and little wind.

 

The only choice was to turn the photo into a 'white-on-black' sketch: