The Royal Ramsgate a ramble

The Royal wasn’t ever thus, the previous building was The Royal Hotel, but before even that it was the Kings Head Inn.

It is partly because of this that I wanted to do a sketch looking from the window of The Royal in the direction of Harbour Parade, anyway here is the sketch.

In this case I used a 0.5mm propelling pencil with a B grade lead, any softer and the watercolour smudges it, any harder and it becomes difficult to rub out.

In 1817 Henry Moses, sometime artist engraver to The British Museum, came to Ramsgate and did a series of sketches which he then turned into a book of engravings of the town.

This is one of the engravings looking this way

 and this is the other.

The pictures are from the A5 reprint I publish of this book.

The Royal produced a much better lunch than I expected, the food in there is very cheap for what you get.

The staff very courteous and I will return, although not perhaps in the evening when I think it is a venue for people who are a lot younger than me.

The sun streams in through the window there and after about an hour, which was how long it took me to eat and do the pencil sketch I was to hot to watercolour it.

I don’t like drawing from photos and in an ideal world I wouldn’t colour a sketch in from a photo either, but will probably give this one a go.

There are surprisingly few places to eat and drink in Ramsgate where there is a view that one would want to draw from any of the tables.

Rambling on, the new development adjacent to Adelaide gardens is nearly finished more photos via the link further on.

Tonight’s council meeting is due to debate The Royal Sands, the council are obliged to do so because of the submission of over a thousand signatures.

Rumour is something along the lines that that the development of the site may be split between two developers, possibly SFP and Cardy, as always with this development information leaks out rather than gets announced.

Here are the rest of the photos from my phone https://plus.google.com/photos/103118335852639233427/albums/5868198131807819825?banner=pwa

I have put the first bit of the watercolour on and am waiting for it to dry before putting some more on, cobalt blue for the sky, davys grey for pizza bank, the road and museum, most of the other buildings got naples yellow and cerulean blue for the roof of the pav.

Always difficult to tell how far to go, with a B grade pencil you can rub out the pencil after you have put the paint on if you want.

A bit of more detailed painting on the left of the picture now, as you can see things are a bit wet in the middle, so a drying break. The frustration of not being able to paint it from life but using a mixture of memory and the photos is difficult to describe.

That's it as they say.

I have joined the middle of the Henry Moses prints together, it should expand if you click on it a few times. the building in front of the obelisk is the Harbour masters house and harbour offices now demolished.