Monthly Archives: September 2016

Stredoslovensko

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We visited Nitra in central Slovakia a while back. Two sketches – first, Gymeš castle:

gymes_castle

Second, the 9th-century church of Sv. Juraj (St. George):

nitra_st_george

After this we went to a fish restaurant. There was some meal labelled pirate-something-or-other which I tried, it was shark and chilli. Shark meat tastes weird, it does taste vaguely fishy but you can kind of tell that you’re eating something a lot higher up the food chain than a normal fish – not a terribly healthy taste either. But I’d eat it again and at least when you’re dealing with a shark, bones are large enough that they’re really no problem.

My computer problems are not solved yet but if I don’t try resizing any GIMP windows it can function for over a minute, which is long enough to turn a scanned pdf file into a png.

More Bratislava

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A day late, because while I have the art, I don’t have the working version of The Gimp, at least on my laptop.

The meeting room in Weber Chemikalien where I taught some students.

weber_room

The interior of Sts. Cyril and Methodius church.

sts_c_m

Part of the city walls, as viewed from the U Dobreho Pastiera pub.

wall_1

wall_2

Britain (still more of)

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I recently visited England, to see family and introduce my girlfriend to the beautiful scenery of the English countryside. (And introduce myself, a bit, as I grew up in a city.)

This is a building in Leominster. Outside was an infoboard describing it as “a remarkable building”. I wrote this on the drawing (as you can see) and have now forgotten the actual name. Googling “leominster remarkable building” gets me nowhere. [EDIT: my girlfriend, who has a better memory than I, has found it for me.]

england_leominster

At the top of St. Lawrence’s church in Ludlow, I sought to draw some of the gothic pointy bits with gothic knobbly bits on. I have no idea what they’re called. Neither did my father.

engl_stlawr_lud

Rewards (I): Hobbit, toilet, forest

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For students who behaved in my classes, points could be accumulated, and traded in for rewards. One possible reward was a request for artwork.

One child requested a hobbit, on a toilet, in a forest. “In an outhouse – a wooden toilet building?” I asked. “No. Just on a toilet. No building. Carrying an axe.”

Well, the customer is always right.

hobbit_forest

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For various reasons (ok, mostly laziness) I’ve been lax in scanning in my more displayable sketches in the last half a year. Now I’ve got a backlog and am scheduling posts in advance. More stuff on mondays and (some) thursdays.