Old photos; Winterstoke Gardens in Ramsgate and some Margate gardens: new photos Ramsgate and Whitstable today, bit of sketching, couple of Ramsgate exhibitions

Gardening is closed book to me, I decided years ago that when I went downstairs I wanted a bookshop, but first some old local garden pictures

Art

York Street Gallery in Ramsgate, The current exhibition is Kate Willis-Crowley
The exhibition runs 27th June - 4th July
Gallery open normal hours.
Here are the photos

Nice Things Harbour Street Ramsgate,
Here are the photos

I went to Whitstable today

 Painted from the balcony of The Horsebridge Arts Centre 

Genuine P.G. Tips and not unnamed English Breakfast Tea from the European tea mountian, I will go back until the painting is done

Photos of Whitstable today here is the link to them unedited from my camera card

The Mitre gates seem to have gone in and the entrance to the inner basin of Ramsgate Harbour seems to have been completely closed by the huge barge with the crane on. Both Wetherspoons and the cafe culture were very busy wen I went for my walk this evening

Here is the link to the Ramsgate camera photos, a few from yesterday but most from today

Ramsgate is busier this June we are selling more books than last June, both Wetherspoons and the cafe culture seem busy

We ate at the Green Tara aka Belgian Cafe last night, probably soon the Green Goddess, the food was very good.

Sorry to cram so much in one post but I'm busy at the moment 

Finally this is the link to the books that went out in the bookshop yesterday 

Watercolour painting in Herne Bay and Whitstable a bookseller tries to skive

I had to go to Herne Bay to buy some books for my bookshop in Ramsgate today. Having done this I went to the bandstand for a cuppa.

Here is the watercolour sketch of Herne Bay Bandstand 

Then onto Whitstable, an interesting place to find a parking space on a bank holiday weekend.

I made for Wee Willie Winkles, bought prawn sarni, cuppa, muffin; the idea being to sit at one of their tables, eat lunch and paint Whitstable harbour.

At this point it all went wrong Wee Willie Winkles have closed their customer toilets, they pointed out that there were public ones in the town, however I was fairly inconvenient at this point, so no watercolour.

Next I thought I would go down to the beach and paint the view

I found a suitable place to sit, as you can see it was fortunate I had my blow up cushion.

The big blue splodge occurred when the blow up cushion blew up, it was a particularly loud bang, I would like to extend my apologies to Tyson and Tarkwin’s mother, who was sunbathing beside me.

When you are painting en plein air and things start going wrong, sometimes the best thing to do is quit, so no more skiving and so off to Oxford Street Bookshop

I did by some tram books, something we are a bit short of at the moment 

Sketching Wallace Pring Castle, against the clock, from Quayside Free House in Whitstable and I do Pot at the Horsebridge.

Here is the Whitstable pen and watercolour, an hour really isn’t long enough to drink a pot of tea, eat a substantial sandwich and do a sketch. Parking was the problem, I spent about half an hour driving around Whitstable – well mostly sitting in traffic jams – and wound up parking in the harbour car park. Maximum stay 2 hours £3, not ideal.

 It would have looked very different had I gone home and painted it from the photo

By the time I had bought a few books and done The Pot business, here is the link http://www.horsebridge-centre.org.uk/?q=node/8066 tomorrow’s the last day you can do this, photos below and well worth a visit, I only had an hour left. 

The start of a watercolour of the interior of The Peter Cushing in Whitstable and some thoughts on music formats’

Not sure if this watercolour sketch of a watercolour of the interior of The Peter Cushing in Whitstable of The Peter Cushing in Whitstable will pass muster, or if I will start again, the pad is standing upright on my desk at the moment and I am thinking on.

The main issue is that every time I go to my favourite winter lunch spot in Whitstable I will do a bit more of the sketch, layers and layers as JWMT would say, and in this one it’s the art deco light shades that give the problem. Hard to draw and hard to get in the right place.

I think painting interiors is more difficult than townscapes and it’s a good place to paint.   

I’m not really sure when I started acquiring recorded music, some time around 1960 I would guess. At around the age of seven it was the format that the adults where getting rid of that could be acquired, usually for free. 78 rpm records, called wax records, but I think shellac (beetle droppings) perhaps there was a huge beetle farming industry. Being a fairly lazy type I never really changed format, so much as got the new player and continued using the old one too. Frankly I use the whole lot.

78s

vinyl

cds

Press 3 if you want to press 8 and listen to boring advert while trying to get rid of the pop up advert.

file downloads

but generally get on best with something physical that is large enough to find.

Anyway today I bought a gramophone record which I put on the gramophone, which while it is not the latest model, works reasonably well, doesn’t require much in the way of special training to operate and honestly the quality doesn’t seem to be significantly worse than the average across all the formats.  

A bit like photographing something and processing it in the darkroom, photographing something with a digital camera or just painting it I suppose.

Anyone recognise this waterfall in Whitstable?

rest of photos