Nuts in Canterbury

I spent most of today in Canterbury, I took a few photos, which you can view, by clicking on this link http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/280517canterbury/

The engraving is Canterbury 1825 not sure if it's supposed to be the same building as the cafe

Drawing and painting Canterbury, the maids and men of Kent, the Kentish men and maids, some thought about the invention of perspective, a few books for my bookshop, Flat Eric plays guitar with a tactless cactus and some thoughts on the value of music and art.

Starting with this pen and ink sketch of the inside of Canterbury Cathedral and working backwards and forwards in time, I will do my best to write some sort of blog post today.

My apologies for not posting for the last couple of days, I have been getting up early for my daubing activities and just haven't had time.

I started in the cathedral at 7am this morning and did the pen bit, unfortunately I had parked myself in part of the cathedral where some intensive god bothering was going on and what with that and not having had any breakfast. OK to put it another way, it felt as though with the act of drawing the cathedral I had developed some sort of empathy with the building, and that it wanted sung matins and was uncomfortable with anything else at 7am and that its being uncomfortable made me so.

So I meandered of to La Trappiste where, as I am getting fat, I had a very modest breakfast of toast and marmalade, surrounded by thin people eating the Full English. Narniaistically I drew a lamppost.

Back to the cathedral for a bit more daubing.

On to Canteen to try and draw the view looking down onto the street from above, as you can see this is something that I can't do very well.

The camera is better at this sort of thing I think.

Back to the cathedral to slap some paint on.

Back to La Trappiste for a cuppa and to bung some stuff around the lamppost.

I have started drawing real live people that I don’t know in public, a scary business, these maids of somewhere or anotherish maids, seemed fairly happy about this, and I guess if I were single and 45 years younger I would have tried for the full Clockwork Orange, or at least a bit of a boogie.

Recently several people have asked if I sell my daubings, so I have been thinking about this and don’t really know the answer, price, the value and so on, I guess the answer is I will get around to getting some prints done, some framing done, and even produce a few greeting cards.

 Anyway with this rolling around in the back of my mind, I sketched a couple of buskers that I stopped and listened to in Canters, and instead of putting my small change in their hats, I chucked the sketch in their hats.

Floyd Rose guitar tremolo, double locking wosisnames are one aspect of guitar maintenance that I leave to the expert (the one in the middle) who in this case is Luke aka Barry, who runs the guitar shop in St Luke’s Avenue and used be an Animal in The Rising Sun sense of the word. So when I went to pick up my Washburn I mentioned the business of getting paid for art to Barry, and showed him the photo of the sketch of the banjoist. Barry like most drummers, didn’t waste time replying my semantics, but looked at the photo of the sketch on my phone, and says. “I know ‘im he buys strings and stuff off me.”     

Flat Eric has discovered that the low action and the amplification is such that he can now do the tactless cactus song with furry hands. The lyrics are loosely based on Geoff Chaucer’s, “Wife of Bath” tale, only it’s a cactus not a red hot poker that features.

I did buy some books for my bookshop and a couple of records that I didn't have, who would have thought I could have got through life so far without having Johnny Cash doing them old cottonfields, while having umpteen versions of pick a bale day? 

Afew photos of Canterbury, showing that perspective hadn't been invented 800 years ago and so on

 

Painting of Canterbury from outside Canteen and possible ramble

Here is the Watercolour and pen sketch from the table outside Canteen, I did this on half a sheet from my sketch pad so the original is about A5, part of the idea being that it should appear about the same size on the blog post, unless of course you click on it to expand it.

Here is a photo for the art critics out there

And here a picture of Canteen, a Canterbury café that comes highly recommended, the upstairs room being a good place to retire to, good food good atmosphere.

I had a bit of a close call with a big lorry while painting, if I hadn’t moved my foot in I think I would have lost it. 

In the wake of the election there are some rather amusing tweets under Thanet was rigged here https://twitter.com/hashtag/ThanetRigged?src=hash

I am assuming the first stage with our new UKIP run council will be the councillors announcing who the new leader and cabinet members are.

The council members don’t really get paid enough for them to make being a senior councillor work as a full time job. All councillors get the £4,570 about £90 per week + allowances for the top jobs, chart will expand if clicked on 

Pen and watercolour painting of Canterbury today and of course some books for my bookshop.

The first pen and watercolour painting is from outside McDonalds in Canterbury, I managed to get a seat under a large umbrella and was able to continue painting during a heavy rain shower.

The second pen and watercolour painting was from the café of the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury, a couple of very mild optical illusions in this one, bringing part of the cathedral into the street and the business with the bridge

I have decided that I need a red or an orange, that is easy to make the colour of bricks with in a hurry, in my pocket paint box so Davy’s Grey, is going to make space for it. There are often distractions related to painting on the spot in busy places that means it is preferable to be able to mix paint in a hurry.

Build a new building with a café that has a stunning view of Canterbury cathedral from the café and then etch opaque lines on the windows that obscure part of the cathedral from eye height when seated at the tables. Yes I know, it’s just me no one else minds this type of thing and I probably shouldn’t mention it, but as I said the other day I am on virtual holiday at the moment.

There is an artistic dilemma here, obviously today with the intermittent showers, if you are going to paint you have to find somewhere dry with reasonable view, so do you do what I did and use the rather irritating perforations at the top of the pad to represent the bottom of the opaque lines of the glass and paint what you can see – obviously demolishing a few houses to fit the gable end of the cathedral into the street – or do you centre the painting on the cathedral, part of which is obscured by the glass.

So then do you take a photo of the cathedral and then paint the image from the photo, photograph the painting and publish it here? Or perhaps you try ducking your head up and down to see the missing bits, so you can see them to paint them?  

On to the books bought in Canterbury today, obviously the star buy here is The Poo Story Book with "new illustrations in full color by E H Shepard", I think this may be an American first edition, but as I have never seen one before and can’t find a picture of it on the internet, it will have to wait until work tomorrow when I look the book up in a book.  

The good news is that I have found a tube of the watercolour paint that seems to do the whole range of orange colours in the bricks I find much more in Canterbury than I do in Ramsgate.

The bad news is time has elapsed since its purchase evidenced by the 2/6 pencilled on the tube, half a crown in about 1969, this equates to around a 24^th of a days pay for a shop assistant around £2.10 now although in reality artist’s quality watercolour paint is around £6 now for a 6ml tube. Oh yes the bad news, they don’t make it now for health and safety reasons. 

If you apply this to books, this is how it works out now, we were paying bookshop staff about £3 per day in 1969 the minimum wage now is £6.31 per hour, which equates to £50.48 for an 8 hour day.

So take a paperback book: The Anti-Death League by Kingsley Amis  published in penguin in 1968 and sold in 1969 for 5/- or 25p.

So a shop assistant in 1969 could buy 12 of them with a days pay.

It is in print now for £8.99 12 being £107.88

The Amazon price is £7.19 12 being £86.28

The Kindle download is £5.49 12 being £65.88

We would have sold it for 2/6 secondhand in 1969 12 being £1.50 well 30/- then, so a shop assistant could have bought 24 with a days pay.

We have one on the self secondhand for £1.50 at the moment 12 being £18 although this isn't entirely fair as if it had only come out last year we would probably be selling it for £2.50 so someone  on the minimum wage could buy 20, I think if there was a minimum wage in 1969 we would have been paying a bit over it, so it comes out about the same. 

The cheapest you could expect to get it online including postage is £1.51 in adaptable condition which means not good from an Amazon seller with 96% positive feedback.    

Pen and Ink sketches of Canterbury today

Some drawings of Canterbury today, done with only a black Pitt pen size S.

These are done fairly quickly while the rest of my family engage in shopping, this one had to be finished very quickly, so the people are not very good I started drawing the buildings from the top in the middle of the picture working to the left, then the water tower and worked to the right, the bottoms being difficult because of the people in the way.

 This one hardly got started before I was summoned to a bookshop.

Here are a couple of photos on the spot, in case you have become geographically disadvantaged.

 Actually looking at the photos they don't really help much, so I guess you can either recognise what the drawings are of or yo can't. 

Trees are surprisingly difficult in this medium, granted they are just a type of scribble, but the wrong type of scribble and they lack treeness.

The main problem today was finding somewhere to sit in the sun, as it was a bit cold in the shade, with the sun more behind me than in front of me, with some of the old Canterbury buildings in front of me. Most of the public seats in the sun are up the top end of the High Street where a lot of the buildings are modern.

To do the one of the tower with the clock on it I had to buy a coffee at McDonalds to get a seat I could draw it from. 

apologies for repeating an image here, just comparing a photo with the clock vertical which I was focused on with the drawing.