Sketching in Broadstairs, do books furnish a room? A dull post for a dull day.

There is a school of thought that as one gets older one needs less sleep. As a teenager I found it hard to come round, just as hard as an adult and now approaching my dotage I like to approach toast, marmalade and coffee tentatively at around eleven.

Since I stopped working in my bookshop on Saturdays – ok I did buy a few books today in Broadstairs – but technically I don’t work, I go somewhere and sketch.

Having arrived a Broadstairs Pavilion around 11 and therefore still pretty much asleep, I did indeed order my toast and pointed my brush at the paper. After about an hour of this I had woken up sufficiently to sketch so I stopped sketching and wandered off down to the pier café.

Here I had the sketching ability but there was music playing somewhere in the background so that you could only hear the beat of the base and not the song, so I went and bought some books.

After this a sarni well actually a panini in Morelli’s and back to my misspent youth looking out of the window of Morelli’s waiting for it to stop raining, after about an hour of failing to draw the bush things I went off and bought some more books.

Looking on today’s post from my bookshop http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/the-journals-of-sylvia-plath-in-bookshop.html I notice that there is whole set of “A Dance to the Music of Time” inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. I don’t see any of my paintings inspiring anyone to write a twelve volume series of novels, but there you go.

Last night in the Belgium Bar I did do another of my paintings in near darkness, inspired by art exhibition there.

A bit more colour on one of the Ramsgate watercolours and a couple of fairly naff drawings of Broadstairs

I slapped a bit more paint on this sketch from outside Miles over toast and marmalade and then the cloud came over. As I could see clear skies over Broadstairs

I went there, the cloud caught up and so I had a cuppa in Costa and sketched Albion Hotel, which as you see didn't go well.

the sun soon came out again so I went to the Pavilion for lunch but once again the drawing was a bit naff

I toyed with putting some colour on it, decided to jack it in and do some work in my bookshop, one of those days.

I am sort of psyching myself up to going out with my oil paints.

Broadstairs pen and watercolour sketch and minor ramble.

Here is the sketch of Broadstairs High Street

And a photo for budding art critics, in this instance the architecture fascinated me.

In Ramsgate McDonald’s is to become The Fabric Shop, Morrisons in Ramsgate is to become a My Local supermarket, work is well underway demolishing the slipways buildings in Ramsgate, this is to become a smaller boat repair yard and the Hornby visitor centre.

The Pleasurama cliff repairs are still ongoing and I still can’t see how they could be finished on time. Just how this will affect the development agreement I don’t know, but my guess is there will be more delays.

Painting and drawing in Broadstairs today

This pen and watercolour sketch of Bleak House from Broadstairs Pier doesn’t quite connect in the middle.

 I penned it in the morning 

after fiddling with the one from the pavilion

put the paint on at the end of the day, not an easy place to paint, far too exposed both in terms of the number of people and the sun.

Lunch at the café on the corner of Serene Place and The High Street

Making this a watercolour painting of Raglan Place from Serene Place in Broadstairs.

finally a few photos of Broadstairs today

Naked and early in Broadstairs, the confessions of an insomniac dauber and a few thoughts on Manston Airport.

Progress on the watercolour painting of The Albion Hotel in Broadstairs this morning, this is a little slow as I have come to the bit where I add the people.

With watercolour you can't realistically put light coloured paint on dark coloured paint, so when painting the people on the balcony first I sketch them in in pale skin tone (a mixture of yellow ochre and rose madder) this is inevitably followed by a small and inquisitive child asking me why all the people in the picture haven't got any clothes on. If you don’t do it this way it is very difficult to get the bits which stick out of clothes (hands, legs head and so on in the right place) next I paint the clothes on) which are almost always darker tones, a white shirt is best painted first in white paint before starting on the body.

Once the people are finished then will come the chairs which are dark brown, followed the railings in front of the people and the chairs, as these are even darker. As folk week has started today I made some of the people look a bit like retired hippies.

Next and inevitably the Manston Airport site cpo by Thanet District Council, to be funded by an American real estate hedge fund broker that would acquire the Manston site freehold from the council.

Here is the council's latest press release about this http://thanet.gov.uk/the-thanet-magazine/news-articles/2015/august-2015/final-request-issued-to-riveroak/

I guess what this is all about is why shouldn’t the council trust RiverOak, both to come up with the money they say they will, and once RiverOak have taken over the freehold from the council, turn it into the airfreight hub and aviation scrap yard they say they will. Obviously as so far all RiverOak seem to have done is part fund the building of apartments, one would assume that that is what they want the site for.

The only member of the RiverOak management team with any aviation history seems to be a lawyer who was struck off for misappropriating clients funds, the whole RiverOak operation is run from a small rented office, so these may be reasons to be cautious.

But the real issue here is where the liability falls if the council were to go ahead with RiverOak as their indemnity partner, and say RiverOak were to go into administration, the liability could be very large, as for instance the particulate air pollution generated by an airfreight hub would have an effect on life expectancy, particularly of Broadstairs and Margate residents who are upwind of airport and takeoff flight path. The noise pollution would have a significant effect on Ramsgate residents who are under the flight path. So say this caused a 20% drop in property values then all of those affected would be able to claim under cpo legislation.

I guess in a nutshell if RiverOak were to go into administration at some point during the cpo the council would be liable for a very large bill. So would the council leader be liable? I guess this a maybe, but as he recently went bankrupt I doubt he has any assets to speak of. Would the chief executive of the council be liable?

Anyway one way or another whoever would be liable would need to be fairly careful at this point, hence the press release.