Friends Thai Restaurant..

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Just drawn this sign for my friends Thai Restaurant. Sawadee Thai Taste in Stoke-on-Trent. She has a hand written sign in biro saying she is doing take away. But no one can see it. So while I go and collect a meal I’m going to drop this off.

I think in these stressful times it’s important to help out, even though this is only a little help…

So many small local businesses are going to close with the virus impacting on them. I want to support what I can.

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Task I hate….

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Urban sketchers, day 9. We were asked to draw a task we hate. Well I hate washing up. Mainly because I have dermatitis on my hands. I can’t wear gloves because I’m allergic. The water gets too hot even with the thermostat at its lowest (very efficient boiler). The sink is too small and leaks. The sides are too shallow so we get tidal waves if my hubby washes. Then I have to dry the surrounding six foot and the floor! The draining board is a bit small too. The microwave side gets soaked when he puts stuff on the drainer. Which is why I do the task most often, even though hating it!

Sketch is in an a5 sketchpad, cartridge paper, using charcoal pencil.

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A task I love

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Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent new challenge, a task you love.

I am trying to plant up hanging baskets, but I only have a few plug plants, and a bit of compost to put them in.

Luckily some of my plants overwintered and are regrowing, so I have a few fushia plants, a lobelia, and some trailing plants with pale purple flowers that is in this basket. I’ve put a few begonias in the pot hanging below it.

I put one basket under another to get a tiered effect. Usually these are full of plants, now I’ve done two with tumbler tomatoes which you put in baskets and as they grow they hang down for picking.

Yes these are tasks I love. X

Trafalgar Square

Today for our virtual sketching visit we drew Trafalgar square in London.

Every weekend Stoke-on-Trent Urban Sketchers chooses a venue to draw from and this week was a view of Trafalgar Square with the National gallery and one of the famous lions in the foreground. The image was taken from Google maps and each sketcher drew it or another view of it. There were about ten artists drawing and sketching or using ink pens, some of them were using watercolours too. At the end we had a throw down (a digital view of all the drawings). An enjoyable couple of hours.

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Digital urban sketch

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Today’s challenge for usk Stoke was to draw my favourite footwear.

I don’t own many pairs of shoes. I’ve got these banana yellow ones, but I haven’t worn them in yet.

This drawing was done on an app called ArtRage. I got the pro version last year as a birthday present.

The drawing is difficult because the colours mix on screen and it’s a bit like painting in liquid butter with a stick, as I was using a stylus. I found getting the size of pens, pencils, or brushes hard, as the size goes from very small, to smallish!

Anyway after faffing about for a while I managed to get a reasonable representation.

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Student memories

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Forty years ago, here are two of my friends who I shared a student house with. Unlike the accommodation today things were different then. It’s like something out of ‘the young ones’ TV series. There was no hot water, just a broken water heater. I hate to say this but there was no bathroom and we used the showers at the college. The washing machine was an old twin tub. Our cooker was gas, but there was no gas fire. Instead we just had a coal fire to warm the whole house. And the toilet was down the yard in an outhouse.

We moved on into a slightly less tumble down house, finished college, and ended up in our own house. But I actually enjoyed life in that house. X

Cupboard, USK S-O-T challenge day 6.

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DAY 6 in the new Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent challenge. I used gold glitter and purple pen to cheers this up. I should have let the glitter paint dry. It clogged up my 0.5 ink pen. I used permanent black and purple pens to draw and add shade…. Noticed I’ve got a lot of egg cups and extra mugs tucked away in there.

“Cupboard” isn’t the most inspiring subject, so instead of drawing cans I decided to draw crockery, pots, glasses and egg  cups.
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