Category: Objects

Coffee cups, bowls, wineglasses, pots in museums, that type of thing

Shetland 2025 – Escudo, an abandoned car

There’s a walk up to the Verda Stane. From up there you can see for miles, a vast undulating landscape. On the walk back down there’s a track. On the track I found an abandoned car, Escudo.

Sketching Escudo, August 2025

This car has been there for a long time. I have sketched it before.

It has become a bit more decrepit. There is more rust. The radiator has fallen off. But it is still there, complete with number plate. This time I saw its name: “Escudo”, on the back door.

Rain was coming.

I managed to complete the sketch, glad to be there.
And then I walked back to the road, and along the road, in the fine rain.

Escudo, August 2025

“A wish, come true, is life. I have my life.” 1

Here are previous drawings of abandoned vehicles in Shetland, including a previous drawing of Escudo. Click the picture to go to the description.

Quaitherin (2020)
Chieftain (2020)
Leeans (2021)
Escudo (2024)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=84&issue=6&page=5

  1. Randall Jarrell 1914-1965- “A Man Meets a Woman in the Street”. ↩︎

Two cranes

These two cranes are at Chatham Dockyard.

Two cranes – etchings
.

They stand by the river, ready for work. They are old cranes. It’s a long time since they lifted loads. But they hold themselves ready, should the call come. While they wait, they talk to each other.

So I put them on the same sheet, they go together through the etching press.

Copper plates
Printing press
Plates on the press (print #2)
print #5 drying

I made five prints of these cranes. The colour is added using the “chine colle” technique.

“Chine collé” means putting paper on top of the plate before it goes into the press. I have written about it on this page.

Here is the paper on top of the plate. It has glue on the top surface. The paper is very lightweight Japanese paper. It’s quite hard to get it to stay in position.

Here is a video of this plate after it’s been through the press:

Printing “Two Cranes”: thanks to friends at East London Printmakers for helping me with the video

I etched the plates and made these prints at East London Printmakers, Stepney. The techniques for making the plates are hard ground, soft ground, aquatint and dry point. The ink is Intaglio Printmakers Shop Mix Bone Black.

The cranes are at The Historic Dockyard, Chatham, Kent ME4 4TE

Let me know if you’d like a “Two Cranes” print? The sheet is about A2 size.

Shetland – beach finds

"Stoop and discover 
the great in the small"

Here are beach finds.

A limpet shell, crab carapace x 2, seaweed, crab claw x 2
Lobster claw and dried seaweed
Crab claw, beach glass, terracotta, dried seaweed.

Three crab claws.

Shetland – another vehicle in space

I have posted before about the wrecked cars that I sometimes encounter on my hikes around the Shetland landscape.

This year I encountered another one.

Wrecked car, Quaitherin, July 2024

Here are the others I have sketched:

2021: see this post
2020: see this post

I don’t want to give the impression that Shetland is littered with abandoned cars. It’s not. But there are certain hidden areas I’ve discovered which are car graveyards, and I now go there deliberately. I find something vaguely poetic, evocative, about an abandoned car in a wide pristine landscape. It’s as though the landscape frames it: puts a picture frame around it and says look! This twisted metal is art.

“look! this twisted metal is art.”

Crete sketches 2024

Here are a selection of sketches made in Crete. The sketchbook is Jackson’s Art Supplies’ own brand, 160gsm watercolour paper, cotton blend, about 8″ x 9″.

I used some of the local earth as pigment, to make a watercolour, using Schmincke watercolour binder.

Binder + earth = watercolour
Binder
Watercolour

I ground the earth using a stone, breaking it up to make a powder like talcum powder. It still had bits in, but I managed to separate it by shaking, and scooped most of the bits off the top with a teaspoon. Then add an equal quantity, by volume, of the binder, and scoop into a suitable receptacle. It can be used immediately: it has the consistency of paint from a tube. Or. leave it to dry, then it’s like a watercolour pan. The “suitable receptacle” here is an empty butter portion container.

Home-made watercolour pan.

The watercolour works amazing well. It is a rich red-brown colour. Ideal for painting the surrounding scenery.

Painting with home-made watercolour

You can see it, for example, in this picture:

Here is a flick through the sketchbook:

Crete sketchbook flick-through

Carting Lane Sewer Gas Destructor Lamp, London WC2

This lamp burns gas from the sewers. It’s an engineering marvel from the Victorian age, together with Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, the Embankment and Tower Bridge. Amazingly, it’s still standing, and still burning sewer gas, now renamed “biogas”. The notice on the fence says:

The adjacent street light is the last remaining sewer gas destructor lamp in the City of Westminster. Installed in association with Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s revolutionary Victoria Embankment sewer which opened in 1870, this cast iron ornamental lamp standard with original lantern continues to burn residual biogas.

City of Westminster, notice in Carting Lane
Carting Lane Sewer Gas Destructor Lamp, sketched 13 Feb 2023, 2pm in Sketchbook 13.

The original purpose of the lamps was not to light the streets but to burn off sewer gas, with the aim of reducing odours, exterminating bacteria in the sewer gas and reducing the explosion risk. Some town gas is drawn in with the sewer gas to make sure the lamp stays alight and does its job. The lamp is alight night and day. This was alight at 2pm.

There’s an article about the lamps on this link .

Carting Lane runs down from the Strand to the Thames Embankment, right next to the Savoy Hotel. I drew the picture standing above the lamp, looking down the lane towards the Thames. Here’s a map.

Here is work in progress:

The colours in the picture are:

  • Ultramarine Blue and Lavender for the sky,
  • Serpentine Genuine/Burnt Umber/Fired Gold Ochre/ Mars Yellow for the mid-tones
  • Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber mix for the blacks and greys
  • Transparent Pyrrol Orange for the 20mph sign on the lamppost.
My current watercolour palette. The colours I used for this picture are starred. All Daniel Smith colours.

Shetland 2022 – Burrastow

Here is a drawing I made after breakfast:

After Breakfast, Burrastow, 9th July 2022

I drew some pictures indoors:

Burrastow – interiors, July 2022

A glass of wine:

A glass of wine – 12 July 2022

An evening on the terrace….

An evening on the terrace, Burrastow, July 2022

Sketching in York

Here is the “Micklegate Bar”, which is one of the great gates through the old City wall into the centre of York.

Micklegate Bar, York, 7th October 2021, 3pm. 7″x10″ in Sketchbook 10

I sketched this outside a bar called “Micklegate Social”. The staff were inside, cleaning and setting up. They very kindly lent me a chair!

The city wall goes off to left and right. I put a two people in, to give you an idea of the scale. They are high up, level with the lowest windows.

“Micklegate” is the name of a street which heads North from the gate. Later on I had breakfast at “Partisan”, a café just up from Micklegate Bar. Recommended!

Quick sketch at “Partisan”, Micklegate, York, ink and coffee. 6″ x 4″ in a small sketchbook made by Heather Dewick.

Outside the wall, to the North West, is the park surrounding the York Museum. I made a picture of the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey.

St Mary’s Abbey, York. 7th October 2021 2pm. 1hr 10mins, 10″ x 7″ in Sketchbook 10

The original church on the site was founded in 1055. In 1089, William Rufus, third son of William the Conqueror, laid the foundation stone for the Norman Church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was an abbey for the Benedictine monastery on this site. 450 years later the monastery was closed, in 1539, under Henry VIII.

The current ruins are 750 years old. They date from a rebuilding in 1271.

Work in progress on the drawing.
  • Micklegate Bar, Partisan Café, and St Mary’s abbey
  • St Mary’s Abbey (top left)
Maps

Abandoned Car, Shetland

Abandoned cars are a feature of the landscape in Shetland. This one is in the initial stages of decay.

Abandoned car, off the Vesquoy road, Walls, Shetland. 23rd July 2021, 5:30pm

Here is another abandoned car:

Shetland: vehicles in space

There’s a lot of empty space in Shetland. As I walked around, sometimes I encountered abandoned vehicles. Here is one. This was the last of a sequence of such car wrecks on a track.…

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Shetland 2021 – Poppies

These poppies were in the vegetable garden.

Poppies, Burrastow. 1 July 2021 on watercolour paper

These poppies were so stunning that I had to try to draw them. There and then. They are also ephemeral.

In a few days the petals had dropped making splashes of scarlet on the grass.

I drew this on special paper: handmade watercolour paper from the Vintage Paper Company. It is very heavily sized and takes the colour well. It’s also stiff, and easy to use out-doors.

The red is Transparent Pyrrol Orange waercolour from Daniel Smith.