Ramsgate Watercolour painting started and a bit of a ramble

This is from Ship Shape Cafe over breakfast, coffee with toast and marmalade

start painting a yellow door and it opens

I have been very busy in my bookshop during the last couple of days.

Here is the link to the fiction books that went away today http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/fiction-in-bookshop.html

And the books that went out on the shelves yesterday http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/paperback-potters-in-bookshop.html

I’m not quite sure if this sort of thing falls in to bracket of advertising or arts, always a bit of a grey area bookshops, a library or art gallery would probably attract public funding, while bookshops tend to get taxed in the same way as betting shops and takeaways. 

Does, for instance saying you have just put out a lot of Thomas Hardy locally fall into the same bracket as a local art gallery saying they have just put a constable on display?

Having written a leaflet about when the Thanet bookshops are open with a bit of Margate history for the tourist information office there, I am now doing one for Canterbury. to be honest I was surprised how popular the Margate one has been. 

Rainbow watercolour painting en plein air, in Ramsgate this morning

Ramsgate rainbow painting this morning, not something you expect to get when just going to start doing the sky.

OK I own up I did move it a bit to the right, the thing with watercolour is you can't paint light on dark so rainbows before skies

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.

Spot the difference with the Ramsgate Harbour Arches watercolour and a bit more painting.

This was lunch time today at Miles Café Culture in Ramsgate about an hour and a half about a third of which was obscured by a parked lorry.

This one was when I was technically speaking shopping this evening

 My attention became retrieved by a Churchillian gesture

   This one in a cafe yeasterday

Oh and work today http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/for-love-of-peanuts-in-bookshop.html

Breakfast and more of the watercolour of Ramsgate Harbour Arches at Miles Café Culture and work at bookselling.

A nice morning his morning, nothing parked in my way and about an hour and a quarter from 8am until I had to go off to work in my bookshop for 9.30.

So here is the watercolour of Ramsgate Harbour Arches from Miles Café Culture

and as you can see all done over civilised coffee, toast and marmalade.

Here is yesterdays work in my bookshop in terms of the books that went out on the shelves yesterday http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/food-fit-for-pharohs-and-hieroglyphic.html this should be enough to keep on top of the books going out.

The issue/problem however you like to see it, is the fall in book prices over the last ten years, means we have to sell a great deal more in terms of quantity, this added top looking every book up online to make sure the shop price is cheaper than customers could buy the same book online, well it’s a lot of work.

Painting Ramsgate Harbour Arches from Miles Café Culture today, the before and after pictures and stuff.

Here are the before and after today’s work on the watercolour of Ramsgate Harbour Arches from Miles Café Culture.

I took a two hour lunch break so about an hour and a half painting and eating antipasti and drinking coke cost about £11

 Not long after I started a lorry parked in the way

So I did the bit I could see through the lorry's window

This was the situation before the lorry parked there so you can see the gap is/will be a white mast

Painting Ramsgate Harbour Arches from Miles Bar Ramsgate at lunchtime today.

When I got back from lunch, she who must be obeyed said my Painting of Ramsgate Harbour Arches looked smaller than she expected, so I have included the 50p for scale.

I had text it to her when the sun started shining in my eyes and I had to stop.

There wasn’t much of my lunchtime left, so I turned round and did a quick pen sketch of the inside of Miles Bar Ramsgate and went back to work to price more railway books.   

With a bit of luck it will be cloudy next time and I can get some more of the painting done.

How to paint a picture on a moving bus, painting Canterbury Cathedral form Chocolate Café and drawing women on busses.

My day off yesterday, which for the secondhand bookseller is always a bit of a busman’s holiday unless I take the bus which means I can’t carry loads of book home and do truly get a day off from my main job, buying and sellin books.

 So off I goes on the Canterbury bus and sketched the view from the  seat, this is a bit like adjusting the set, getting your hand in, so you can draw. Getting out of the the way of the bit between the bit of your brain that does art and the end of  the pen and brush; don't talk to me about pencils

 So I got to a sort of "Do not adjust your brain, reality is at fault." stage. And then what? Drew the girl in the next seat, When the bus arrived I the the rather embarrassing. "Please miss I just drew you." bit, which went fairly well and the drawing went in the phone. I then put as many people exiting the bus between subject and artist, in case I was mistaken for a senile perv with a bad pick up line and went of to Chocolate Cafe, for the view.

 Here is the watercolour painting of Canterbury Cathedral wot I am doin from there, where? Chocolate Cafe.

 Puttin detail in the middle bit.

Sketched some of the people in Chocolate cafe, couldn't get the words out and scurried off to the bus and got on the one going the wrong way, via Margate. Temporary insanity caused by art, what's the cure? Don't paint and draw? Exactly.

 Sat upstairs, front seat and tried to draw the view as the rain meant you couldn't see out of the window

It wasn't that good.

Changed buses in Margate and drew some ladies who being a bit older meant I didn't have to say anything much, they seemed pleased by the divertion.

Making Love to the Dragon at Turner Contemporary and the racing at Crampton, an afternoon out in Broadstairs and Margate.

Look if you haven’t read Moving Pictures, click on the link https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gDnb8AlIMAUC&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&dq=moving+pictures+pot+pellet+pratchett&source=bl&ots=P6qwiqyn2Y&sig=Zz4jMUqV46V_yRO2nWHRTrnBnaQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAGoVChMI0vebx4jwyAIVhCgeCh2RNQG6#v=onepage&q=moving%20pictures%20pot%20pellet%20pratchett&f=false 

And if you don’t know how it relates to Turner Contemporary and the “Risk” exhibition, read my post http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/risk-in-margate-at-turner-contemporary.html

Anyway when I got back here last time to write the post I couldn’t remember if it was dragons or elephants on the pot, no photography in the exhibition, see.

So first thing I does, actually first thing I does when I gets to the gallery is put my coat in a locker and go to the toilet – disabled one actually because I wanted to sing fairly loud and didn’t want to spoil anyone's aim in the gents. Yep first thing I does is go up into the gallery and ask for an adjustable gallery chair to sit on so I can sketch the pot.

Quick pen sketch of the seismograph, which the gallery have wrongly labelled a seismometer please note this is a sketch to remember the thing by and not a sketch of the thing.

One big problem about sketching anything not vegetable or mineral is that you tend to come away from the thing feeling a bit like you have made love to it, the dragon wouldn’t let me draw its teeth, as you can see.

If I was going to lecture a group of students about the relationship between art and science, I would say “There is no relationship between art and science.” and then spend the rest of the lecture sketching the students, and refusing to say anything else about the subject.

I was feel a bit burnt out after the dragon so went off to the gallery and drew some young people, as if the animal is human and alive there is a sort of return energy, so thanks.

On to Crampton Tower in Broadstairs where my children did “Slot Racing” and pressed buttons.

Here are my Photos