SUNSHINE AT LAST!

 

At long last after a very wet and windy few weeks the sun came out and the temperature warmed up enough to go out for a walk. On Thursday afternoon I set off down our lanes wading through the puddles and looking at what was going on in nature.  I saw the first primroses and the gorse was covered in flowers. I had decided to pick a sprig when my neighbour came along carrying her long hedge trimmer with the intention of collecting some ivy for her goats. She very kindly cut some for me and we stopped for a chat.  While we were talking I noticed the ferns moving in the breeze and the wonderful golden spores on the underside of the leaves which matched the yellow of the gorse.

 

 

In the morning we went into town for Bob's dental appointment and after a look around the shops I took a coffee in the cafe opposite the church. It looked lovely with the blue sky complementing the pink granite it's built from.  I had plenty of time to do this sketch although the arched doorway does look a bit narrower than reality!

 

This painting of Vaison la Romaine on hand made paper was the card I made for Bob's birthday last year.  It brings back lovely memories of summer exploring the 'Cotes du Rhone villages' wine region in Provence.

PEN PORTRAITS

 

And now for something completely different. I like to draw portraits of my grandchildren every couple of years and I usually do them in a soft pencil from the Derwent drawing pencil collection as there are several sanguine and terracotta shades which suit portraiture. However I saw a drawing recently done in a sepia pen and decided to have a go.

 

 

 

I started with Kirsty, the eldest, copying a photo taken while we were skyping recently. I drew it freehand, measuring as I went but as you can see there were many errors which I noted at the side of the drawing. She has a wonderful smile but it's really hard to do justice without drawing the teeth. I read somewhere that it's best to only hint at them in a portrait as they dominate the face otherwise. 

 

 

 Next I had a go at little Jimmy copying the picture on the calendar Jo sent me for Christmas. I think I've overdone the shadows here but at least the teeth aren't so obvious!

 

I have a beautiful photo of my mother in a frame in my workroom so she was the next to get the pen treatment.  I can see lots of mistakes here too and I'll probably trace the outline of the faces in future to try and get a better resemblance. 

The one at the top of the post was the last one I did after changing to an ordinary gel pen and I think I prefer how it's turned out. I think Sarah won't be too disappointed to see it either, the reason I put it at the top. I just know Kirsty will hate the one I've done of her! 

I've got lots of lovely photos of Mum I want to have a go at so it's back to the drawing board!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

 

I hope you all had excellent Christmas and New Year celebrations.  We've had a nice time here with a few sorties with friends and a few quiet days to get over the excesses too! 

 This little plant sits on our coffee table and is slowly opening it's pretty flowers which turn pale green after a few days.

 

 

I haven't done a lot of sketching in my black book but here's a catch up of what I drew before Christmas.  This Hydrangea flower was hanging on despite the wet weather so I brought it in to enjoy before it got washed away!

 

 

I started to plan my sister Juliet's birthday card with these sketches of some of the butterflies that I photographed in the summer as I wanted to do something original for her.

 

 

We had so many butterflies on our ivy bank right through to October as they love the nectar on the delicate flowers.  I picked a sprig to draw to try and understand the growth pattern and leaf shapes.

 

 

Here is the final result drawn in Pablo coloured pencils on stonehenge paper which has a lovely surface perfect for this medium.  Juliet was delighted with her card when she opened it on her birthday just before Christmas.

EGYPTIAN JOURNEY LAST PART

Ramses II drawn with Derwent drawing pencils on mi-tientes paper.

 

We returned to Luxor for the last 2 nights on the cruise boat and had the opportunity to look around the town on the Friday morning.  Bob and I chose to visit the museum and took a taxi from the rank near the mooring. There was a lot of competition to get passengers and a bit of haggling over the price but we got a very good deal and the taxi took us wherever we wanted for a few hours.

 

 

Luxor museum is one of the best I have ever visited, full of wonderful artifacts, well labelled in English and beautifully laid out. I could easily have spent the whole day there.  This statue of Thutmosis really struck me and I almost felt in the presence of the long departed pharoah. There were displays of some artifacts that had only recently been discovered in 1989 and 2004 as well as a lot of the household objects found with Tutankhamon like his bed and chariot.

 

 

Every town in Egypt has these caleches which are used to transport tourists around.  We went on one for our visit to Edfou which was fun as the driver was showing off how fast he could steer through the traffic which was mostly old vans and motorscooters.

 

 

In Luxor we saw this amazing structure on a roundabout at the edge of town. Huge and very colourful.  The town itself is on the banks of  the river Nile with views across to the fields and low hills on the other side.  The sides are lined with cruise ships, sometimes moored up to 6 abreast so you have to go through all the other boats to get to yours.

 

 

Since the terrorist attacks a few years ago the Egyptian authorities have set up a system of armed guards around all the main tourist centres.  It gave us peace of mind but was a bit scary to see guns sticking out of the watchtowers everywhere we went. On the Friday afternoon we set off in our coaches to see the temple of Denderah, accompanied by our armed guards in a land rover and on the Saturday we had an escort all the way across the desert to Hourgada for the second week of our holiday by the Red sea.

 

 

The life outside the towns in Egypt looks much the same as it must have thousands of years ago with peasants using donkeys to transport their goods to market and bullocks to help plough the fields. The clothes look just like those paintings in my bible I had as a child!

We had a holiday of a lifetime and I can heartily recommend it to anybody as long as they have the stamina to keep up the pace and are prepared to suffer a bit with the tummy troubles. I haven't tried to describe too much of what we saw at the temples and tombs, it would take too long and I really only wanted  to give a flavour of the trip so that my readers may be interested in taking a further look at a fascinating part of human history.

Please feel free to post some comments on my blog, it's so nice to get feedback. 

Seasons greetings to all of you around the world!

EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 5

 

A fellow sketcher has just reminded me about the art of David Roberts. In 1838 he travelled to Egypt to record the monuments that had recently been discovered buried in the desert sands.  Have a look at his drawings if you can and you will see the temples we now know so well from documentaries half covered with sand and people were able to walk almost on the level of the decorations at the tops of the columns.  I bought a book while we were on the cruise and was totally captivated by the beauty and accuracy of his pictures, some of which almost match the photos I took from the ground.  The archaeologists and restorers of Egypt have done a phenominal job excavating these amazing monuments for us to see.

 

 

Back to the trip now: on the third day of the cruise we were woken at 6 am to visit the temple of Kom Ombo. This temple is dedicated to Horus and Sobek, the crocodile god and we saw a 2000 year old mummified crocodile there. The reason for the very early starts was that so many people visit these temples and the heat of the sun in the daytime makes it more pleasant to go at dawn. 

We were back on board by 0830 and cruising on down to Aswan where the boat tied up alongside several other cruise boats. We were about the 4th boat out from the dockside! After lunch we were taken to see the temple of Philae (above) which had been completely rebuilt on another island when it's original island had been flooded after the construction of the Aswan dam. I can still fel the hot sun I felt on my back as I drew this sketch.

 

 

After the temple we went to a perfume factory and another papyrus shop where we were expected to spend more money! At this stage we still had no Egyptian pounds as all the shops took euros and the street sellers preferred them, often exchanging them for Egyptian small change which we could use to buy small items.

The next day some of our fellow passengers were up at 3 am to visit Abu Simbel temple a few hours further south of Aswan but we had decided to spend the morning exploring the town itself and going out to see the dam which was very interesting. 

The afternoon was brilliant, we had a trip on a fleet of feluccas which took about 20 people each and were powered only by the wind in their huge sails. We sailed up the river, around several islands and then back in the sunset, when the wind dropped and we had to be towed the last few metres by a motor boat.

 

 

The next day (5) the boat set off again heading north back to Luxor and the wind was against us most of the way, making it pleasantly cool on the sundeck but making quite a splash on the side of the boat. We realised at lunchtime that the boat wasn't completely waterproof as our bags were quite wet when we picked them up after lunch in the dining room which was at water level. We had to stop at Esna on the way to await our turn through the lock and although we didn't go ashore we were moored right by the bustling harbourside and able to watch all the activity for a few hours till we were on our way again.

 

 

The view of lake Nasser which was formed by the construction of the Aswan dam was quite beautiful, fading into the distance in shades of blue  and purple.

EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 4

 

Our second day in Egypt was quite different from the first. We set off before dawn to cruise along the Nile so that when we woke in the morning we could see the banks of the river passing our window. I should say that we were on one of the lower levels of the ship so that we were quite close to the water.

 

 

It was a delight to be slowly moving along past sandy hills and clumps of palm trees with a few islands dotted here and there in the river with the occasional mosque or a group of traditional buildings to break up the scene. Our boat had a wonderful sun deck with shaded seating areas, a swimming pool and sunbeds so we spent a lovely morning chatting with the other passengers and drawing in my sketchbook.

 

 

We saw many feluccas, the local style of boat as we cruised along, some fishing, some ferrying people across the river.  The life here looked the same as it has probably looked for the last 3000 years.  Eventually we came to Edfou where the boat stopped and tied up for the afternoon.

 

 

 

We were taken off to see another temple, this time built by the Greeks and finished by the Romans about 1000 or 2000 years after the original temples built by the Egyptians. Tarek explained that the decorations of the later temples were poor copies of the originals and that the physical proportions of the gods and pharoahs depicted in the friezes were incorrectly drawn.

We sat on the top deck at sunset at teatime and were rewarded with this fantastic sight as the colours changed through all shades of pink and purple.

 

 

This is another drawing of Ramses II from my collection along with the one of Tutankhamon at the top of this post. Both are done in coloured pencil.

EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 3

 

Our first day in Egypt continued after the visit to Rameses II tomb with a visit to the Valley of the Kings.  The weather was  beginning to get rather hot by this time and it was very pleasant to go down into the coolness of the tombs.  We saw 3 different tombs but didn't go into Tutankhamon's as the queue was very long. I was fascinated by the quality of the paintings on the walls and sides and even the ceilings had been painted with stars and dark blue paint.

 

 

 

Our guide was excellent at explaining the different styles of sculpture and the tops of the columns were interesting for all their varying styles.

 

 

We left the valley of the kings at midday and headed back to the boat for lunch, having been sightseeing since 6 am! After lunch we were back in the coaches to go to Karnak to see the famous temple which took us most of the afternoon.  I loved the hall of columns there, carved with different scenes from the life of Rameses II.  This statue towered above us and the small person at the base is his wife Nefertari, about normal human size.

 

 

Then we toured a papyrus factory where we were persuaded to purchase their hand made pictures.  I did buy a few which appealed to me but I would prefer to have been able to buy some blank paper for myself!

 

 

Our last visit was to the temple of Louqsor which had been timed to take place at sunset and wow, what an experience! The whole place was bathed in golden light which continued after sunset with floodlighting.  More fascinating stories from Tarek and hundreds of photos of course.  This is a copy of my favourite photo of the head of Ramses with the light casting beautiful shadows, drawn on papyrus.