Thursday 31 May 2018

Foggy Watercolour Sketch over lunch at The Captain Digby Kingsgate near Broadstairs and this and that

The fog from the sea was drifting about and so I couldn't see well to paint this watercolour sketch from The Captain Digby Kingsgate near Broadstairs.

This was my best attempt at a photo of the view from my table.

I will try a food review wosisname relating to my lunch next, useful watering hole if you have children as it has steps down to the beach and the pub is very child friendly.
 I had a cheese roll, good quality cheese and pickle, should have come with crisps but paid extra for chips with it as I was painting and I have difficulty eating crisps with a fork.

She who must be obeyed had baked potato with cheese and salad in miniature colander.

I then had a chocolate ice cream

I was pleased to see it.

Normal sort of day possibly off or something for me, went to Herne Bay, bought some books about Whitstable to sell in my bookshop in Ramsgate type of kidney.

Some links next.






On into Broadstairs where I bought more books





I may add a bit more to this post later

 Been looking at the mist fog wosisname and trying to capture some edges to it






Tuesday 29 May 2018

Turner Contemporary, Animals and Us, not a review just a first impression, Margate Meltdown Bank Holiday photos

It’s been a pretty full Bank Holiday weekend for me, no time for a blog post, I did a bit of sketching in Canterbury and a fair amount of just meandering around in Ramsgate and Margate, sometimes taking photos.

So what about the Animals and Us exhibition? I think the high point was somewhere anywhere – not sure - while in the exhibition I realised I had been transported a long way from where I though I was. Does that make sense? Will it happen to anyone else? But yes I suppose I was in Margate, but something clicked and I sort of wasn’t, perhaps because some of the works of art seem to have a high level of impact.

Margate is a place of contradictions and extremes, a busy High Street full of empty shops contrasted with shops that seem to be very upmarket and expensive. Margate Meltdown Bank Holiday means the town was full of motorcyclists too.  

In the Animals and Us exhibition, I certainly felt for more than a moment "transported" so perhaps art reached some purpose.
the relationship between people and animals
definitely worth going to see
Makes you think
Anyway as I get time I will go back to this exhibition and try to say something more comprehensible about it.

The pictures on my camera's card for the weekend, these two links mostly being Ramsgate and relating to the harbour lock gate and bridge removal for repairs and a couple of visiting tall ships.

Link 1

Link 2

The next two links are Margate yesterday, including a few of the exhibition.

Link 3

Link 4

I am reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami at the moment, so I am already getting strange writing on the real world, along the lines of "Do not adjust your mind; reality is at fault."

This is an example, photographed in Wetherspoons Ramsgate on Friday

I have enlarged the sign on the, dare I say door? Nope probably best stick with wosisname for the moment.

While not absolutely, way to the left, I am becoming progressively more interested in the increasing amount of fake local history appearing on social media. This seems to be connected with copying pictures from the internet and republishing the pictures on another part of the internet, often without the text that the person who owns the original picture put with it. The writing on the back, date, place. Sometimes even old fake news is now appearing as new fake history.

My own take here is that the internet has changed so much since I first started using it for local history around 20 years ago, that now nothing can be taken as real, even if it looks like a door, it may very well be a wosisname.

 So if you take a few old local postcards it may well be that the writing on the back is becoming more important than the picture on the front. Just because it says Ramsgate 1724 onit it doesn't mean it wasn't painted at a much later date.


This is the link to the books that went out in the bookshop on Saturday 

Sticking with the fake history for a bit, I suppose that there are a great many people who prefer to view the past through rose tinted glasses. So there may be a sense in which, like fake news, fake history is inevitable.

Friday 25 May 2018

Ramsgate today and ten years ago

 Ramsgate inner harbour lock gates first,
as you can see the mitre gates have gone and the bridge

has gone too

off to Holland for repair

Ramsgate in 2008, here are the links:- link 1  link 2  link 3   link 4  link 5 link 6

Thursday 24 May 2018

May 2010 in Thanet

Turner Contemporary was still in the building in Margate, here is the link to rest of these photos


We went on to a Tracey Emin exhibition in the black round building on the back of the Droit House and I had assumed the visitor information centre was in the Droit house, but looking at the photos it obviously wasn't.

this is the think to the Emin exhibition  which I assume was to do with he neon that is still over the front door.

  In Ramsgate the visitor information centre went


 as you see I was having trouble with horizontal horizons back then, so an uphill struggle for the ferry

this is the link to the rest of the photos

 I don't think Broadstairs changes that much
 or do they
 stuff seems to move around

this is the link to Broadstairs pictures

we have spent most of the day in Canterbury buying books for the bookshop, some of the books that went out on our shelves yesterday are a bit timewarp too this is the link to the pictures of them

 

Wednesday 23 May 2018

Some Victorian Ramsgate views and some charabanc outing photos

The pictures should expand to a greater or lesser extent if you click on them a bit

 This first batch date from the 1850 to 1870 period




I think these are mostly Margate outings between around 1910 and 1930 the hard rather thatn inflatable tyres




 F. Jones & Co. Zion Place


It's blue circle time and the cement of technology; so not an extensive blog post text wise today.

This link will take you to my unedited camera card photos for the last few days


Although these sets of photos can be a bit boring, they soon mature with time

This is the link to some of the May 2010 ones clicking on it can get you down among the Little Ships, on the whole the blue circles seem to have been worth it