Monday Ramble Art Chair Pictures Margate Kites Camera and so on.

As I have mentioned before I have taken up painting and drawing again after a gap of about forty years, unfortunately this isn’t like riding a bicycle inasmuch as when you try to do it again things do not go that well and I am finding that I am pretty much having to learn again.

This means that most of my spare moments are spent painting or drawing and not blogging and most of the results are pretty awful.

On the whole I suppose the question is, why would I want to paint things or draw them when it is so easy to take a photograph of them, or find a better picture of them on the internet? I am not really certain that I have an answer to this one, but it is what I am doing and I seem to enjoy doing it.

One thing that I find quite strange is that I can’t seem to do it standing up, so the pictures are of a rucksack that unfolds into a chair, it also holds an A3 sketch pad which is very handy. Although this is strictly fishing equipment, I will go on about art equipment for a bit. I did go down the road of buying student quality watercolours but this didn’t work out so I have now had to do this again with artists quality.

The trouble is with these things you can’t try before you buy, and this means that every colour that you want to try you have to buy a tube of to see if it does what you want it to. I generally paint with only about ten different colours but it is getting the right ten, that is the problem.

Onto the pictures on the camera card, I went to Margate last Thursday to have another look at the new exhibition in the Turner Contemporary and do some more sketches, the pictures are a bit obsessive as I am trying to get the way I paint reflections a bit better.

I can thoroughly recommend the Puffin Café on Margate harbour arm, both for a civilised pot of tea and a ploughman’s lunch, and of course the view, probably the best value for money in terms of a snack in Margate.

The café at the gallery is good too, my wife and I had steak baguettes there, it is fairly expensive though, frankly if it wasn’t I think it would be too busy.

So here are Thursday’s pictures.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/911/id12.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/911/id13.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/911/id14.htm

Back to the try before you buy problem, and this time it is a pocket camera, my previous one expired after considerable use and as I use reading glasses I have to have a conventional viewfinder, I just can’t see the screen well enough.

Asking around the family for any redundant pocket digital cameras that I could try and then buy for the going rate if I liked one of them, I have been trying out a Cannon PowerShot G9.

I usually use a digital slr camera but like to have a small camera always in my pocket, first impressions with this camera set on auto and just pressing the button are fairly good and I think this is the one I will opt for it.

Here are the pictures.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/911/id17.htm

I went back to the Turner Contemporary on Sunday morning to look more closely at one of the Turner Watercolours, photography isn’t allowed but I have manage to find a small reproduction of this one on the Tate’s website.

I should like to place exactly where in Margate Turner painted this one, I think the building with all the chimneys is a tin plating factory, although you can’t see them in this picture due to the low definition, Reculver towers are clearly visible on the end of the headland on the horizon.

This picture dates from the mid 1780s.

Here are the pictures I took while I was waiting for the gallery to open.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/911/id19.htm