This block still feels so familiar to me despite being gone for a number of years, and I still consider Beatties being behind there and that has long since gone and I think was even a Toymaster at some point. My internal map of Blackpool is so weird and is mix of present and the 90s and a lot from the 90s just isn’t there any more like Electronics Boutique inside the Houndshill.
I can’t personally recommend the fish and chips here as I have never eaten from this shop myself. The combination of buildings along the Blackpool Seafront are fascinating, so I wanted to just draw the buildings and not worry about painting so I grabbed a sheet of kraft card and just drew it all.
The drawing is A3 on kraft card done initially with pencil for the basic forms and then working up the drawings in Posca Marker, for something a little bit different.
My last print that I made for Trinity Hospice is customised by hand, and what most people don’t realise is that I do them to order, so I have a draw full of prints that I have signed and put the title on and numbered them. And then they sit in that draw until I need them. I then grab a print and alter it when they are sold. I have a few ideas for my next print, and have ideas on how to improve the experience for customers too.
The next batch will be printed on different paper and will probably be Fleetwood Ferry, although I have some ideas for tea cups, and I will be looking for volunteers to try the new process out on in the future. Watch this space!
A personal favourite of mine that I have painted in 2021, I just loved the colours and the shapes of all the buildings and how they work together. Especially with the clouds they help pull it all together drawing you back towards the Oyster Bar.
A4 painting, done in my signature style with watercolour, ink and Posca markers
Robert’s Oyster Bar is in Central Blackpool near the Tower and the North Pier overlooking the promenade and the sea front.
Just don’t venture too far from cover with food or the seagulls will make sure that they get their fair share of your food.
Is May and as I write this the new Obi Wan Kenobi series has been released and I am excited to watch it, and am staying away from social media until I have had chance to watch it with my other half after she gets home from work this evening.
Star Wars was a pivotal point in my teenage years it made me want to draw, to paint, for many years it was my passion, it is my teenage drawings that going me accepted to many different courses after I initially went to university to study chemistry.
I still want to be good at drawing and painting to live up to those teenage dreams of working on a Star Wars film. I want to keep painting.
Even when I was doing a degree in ceramics I would write about painters, I would go on trips to look at landscape painting and illustration. My jumping point for ceramics was always painting as a frustrated painter, want to be able to draw better and for years I painted and drew and kept it to myself.
I will keep going but it can be hard at times, frustrating but I’m getting better and I will keep painting and drawing.
These two watercolours are probably my favourite Star Wars things I’ve painted this month, and they are available in my shop for sale, Luke’s Landspeeder and Rebel Snowspeeder
If you are interested in purchasing please contact me
Origami Water Bomb
Or how I caused trouble in high school
When I was in high school or at least my last two years of high school, I was fed up, didn’t feel like I was making any progress, so I started entertaining myself in classes by making origami models. The thing is the only one I had actually memorised from my older brothers book was for a “water bomb”.
They wouldn’t that effective for holding water, as generally filling them from a tap, water would spill all over them as the hole was so small. they would just end up soggy.
So what I did instead was make them to all different sizes and colours, and with any paper I could get my hands on, even tiny little ones smaller than a centimetre cube that I built with the assistance of a pair of compasses. I would then hide them with my co-conspirators in classrooms to be discovered when we weren’t there.
No one ever questioned me about it, and having worked in education I can only imagine that they weren’t bothered as at the end of the day a lot of stuff just gets swept into the bin.
This water bomb is drawn on A4 Cartridge Paper and drawn in pencil crayon.
