Category: Plymouth Sound

#1263 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Photographs, art, Words, Plymouth Sound, Plymouth, Stonehouse, Hybrid PrintmakingLeave a comment

Does every picture tell a story?

I think most do.

This one tells of the late summer clear up. All family guests have moved on to different holiday destinations and our home has eased back from peak occupation. The crocs belonging to three small girls are gathered in a bucket by the back door while the girls themselves are away on different holiday adventures.

Using a similar colour scheme I am trying to tell the story of a set of swimming steps that are much quieter this week now the heatwave has moved on.

I am at heart a story teller either with words or pictures.

A regular blog reader, who is familiar with these steps, said yesterday that I had made them look very posh. That was not the intention, but I agree. They may have been posh once upon a time but shabby shic is a better description now. Most of the time they are entirely tolerable and are regularly washed by incoming very high tides.

At night they can be a gathering place for  smokers of weed and men who like to do a wee. Not so posh then. Not so great as a swim destination either. Not  so great a picture.

But I don’t need to tell that story about these steps.

Years ago a little pair of discarded crocs by the back door of the actual Old Mortuary used to break my heart.   A small person and her family  had left us to live abroad. That would not have made a great story or a great picture.

3 pairs of crocs in a bucket is a much better story.

However in the interests of story telling I also wanted to show the earlier set of steps at the peak of the August heatwave. I am not interested in the crowds of people who used these steps recently just the steps as a metaphor for extreme atmospheric and radiated heat. Just too much heat.

The heat blistered out of the rocks at night. And the sea languidly lapping the steps, warmer than we have ever known. Not quite cooling enough perhaps. Oleaginous even.

A different colour scheme. A completely different story.

#1535 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Plymouth Sound, StonehouseLeave a comment

Funny things can spark a creative patch. For me it can be a deadline, a creative itch, or a commission, but this month I am aware that my creativity is directly linked to an ‘artistic difference’

I have been mulling over my comments and the comments of others.  I am in the happy place of being content in agreeing to disagree. Now, my happy place thinking may affect decisions I make about which arts organisations I join in the future, but it may not.

But for now I am glad my painting mojo has returned with some lovely energy.

These two people on the beach are not having an argument. They are inspired by the many memorial benches I pass on my daily dog walks. The combination of names on benches who have enjoyed overlooking Plymouth Sound are  not always traditional couples,sometimes they are friends, neighbours  or colleagues. Names however come and go in fashion. Some pairings may never be popular again. Were my parents to have had a memorial bench it would be dedicated to Joy and Keith. One set of grandparents would be Gladys and Leonard. Or in a different marriage Gladys and Reginald. Not pairings I expect ever to be fashionable again.

This couple sit, overlooking an unchanging seascape. I sat them on wooden deckchairs to enhance the timelessness of the scene. The figures are androgynous and could be any two people of any gender or age or race. Most importantly they could be Edith and Herbert, Sharon and Tracy or Amir and Tulip.  Just two people enjoying the view any time since 1886 when the deck chair was first patented

I needed a bit of space to add the quote. So the painting needed a good gap where not much was happening.

The artistic difference was based on a statement that ‘real artists’ don’t use digital manipulation tools that could be considered to be on the slippery slope towards AI .

As part of my creative process I use digital manipulation on occasions, but also get painty and dirty just like any other real artist.

Here my initial sketch and the subsequent watercolour have been digitally combined.

Firestone Bay at Low Tide © theoldmortuary

Later on I may work into the watercolour with pen and ink to get a similar appearance. 

I do rather love the effect a minor disagreement has had on my creative thinking and more than happy to agree to disagree with’real’ artists. Real or not I have been hard at it today.

Detail of the finished piece. I am undecided about my ultimate presentation. As above with lots of space in landscape format or tighter cropped in Portrait.

#1281 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Plymouth, Plymouth SoundLeave a comment

What was the last live performance you saw?

Here is a conundrum. I did not see the last live performance that I experienced but I did hear it. I went to Plymouth Hoe, this morning, for the V E Day 80 Civic service and arrived too late to see anything apart from service personnel’s bottoms.

Or the back of the Mayoral Party.

But I did hear some marvelous music and listened to the Churchill V E Day speech in full for the first time. All in all a most exceptional and interesting dog walk .

Even more thrilling, one of the people at the top of the Lighthouse is my friend Jenny. She is the smaller human of the three.

#1102 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Plymouth Sound, SerendipityLeave a comment

11.11.24 Armistice Day.

After all the music, marching and speeches of Remembrance Sunday. We took a quiet morning walk at the Plymouth War Memorials. No crowds and some lovely family flowers just quietly laid among all the vivid redness of the more iconic Poppies.

One statue returned to being the favourite perching place of seaward looking seagulls.

Lets see what the shape of the world will be like in a year’s time. We may well remember but we don’t learn. It’s all a bit shit really.

#1101 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Plymouth Sound1 Comment
Sutton Harbour

Our dusk/ dark walks are taking us away from our home streets at the moment. Last night we did a circuit of Sutton Harbour and the Barbican. Just an hour’s walk on the eve of Remembrance Day.

All the bustle of bars opening and cafes and shops closing reflected on still waters.

The Barbican has set its normal illuminations to Red for Remembrance.

Remembrance Day in Britain feels like the last full stop before the run up to Christmas. The beginning of noticeably shortening days, colder weather and rampant consumerism.

At home we are still in a flurry of redecoration and reorganisation.  Every trip to a charity shop or scrap store feels like a minor victory against ‘stuff’. I am having to channel my creative energies into tidying and sorting, ignoring the itch to put paint on paper or canvas.

But today our busy domestic schedule will stop for a while to observe and consider the costs of war to the community we currently live in.

#1008 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Plymouth Sound1 Comment

Wild camping with a five year old. Our plan was to park in a quiet corner of Mountbatten to give our 5 year old grandchild the chance to be immersed in Nature for 24 hours. What had slipped our minds was that a World Championship Sailing event was being held at our chosen destination.

Regardless we found a perfect quiet corner to camp and arrived just as the last races were being held. Tiny sailing boats competing in the early evening sun. The winners heralded with a klaxon call just beyond our bushes.

Our evening dog walk enlivened by the happy chatter of many different languages eager to party and then be on their way. Small boats packed away on trailers.

This morning we awoke to the graceful dance of maritime traffic going about its business in Plymouth Sound. After being lulled to sleep with the gentle thud of Drum and Bass at celebratory parties and International teams slipping away at midnight.

Wild camping, not as planned but wild and memorable in its own way.

When the fairy path takes us to a tanker.

#827 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Art for sale, Plymouth Sound1 Comment

I am a mucky watercolour painter. I am also a procrastinator, so sometimes I see disaster as a lovely excuse for a tidy-up.  Yesterday afternoon I discovered something messy had occurred in my watercolour storage box. Despite needing to get on with a painting I set about resolving my disaster. Meanwhile, outside, my home city of Plymouth was dealing with a much more serious potential disaster.

BBC News – Plymouth WW2 bomb found in a garden, detonated at sea. Read link below.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-68385962

Not an everyday driving job. ©Cyberheritage

The outdoor potential disaster had given me a few daylight hours to start a new painting. All waterfront areas were closed to the public, and many local roads. No trains, busses or ferries. The perfect excuse.

Paints all tidied up. My models were arranged.

And I began the painstaking task of painting and printing a cup of mint tea resting on a bistro table, standing on a tiled floor.

I think there is a delicious irony in painting a cup of calming mint tea; while not 500 yards from my home a bomb weighing over 1,000 pounds or 500kg is being towed out to sea.

Daylight failed me, eventually and I have not managed to finish. Just the dregs of the tea have been painted into the cup. Two disasters resolved successfully.

One day later and the job is done.

#712 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Plymouth SoundLeave a comment

Do you need time?

This painting is on a noticeboard near one of my regular dog walks at Mount Wise. I see it so often and yet until yesterday I had never given it time. It is painted in the style of an Old Master and features a rural bucolic theme of a shepherd tending his sheep, overlooking the Hamoaze. For the first time ever I realised that the painting has modern super yachts moored at one of the pontoons. I am going to have to go back and actually read the noticeboard now. Give it some time in fact.

I suppose I was alert to incongruity yesterday.

Yesterday a German warship sailed, as they often do, up towards Devonport Dockyard. Not something that would have been calmly observed in 1943!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_frigate_Rheinland-Pfalz_(F225)

No shepherds, no super yachts, no German warships.

#24 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Plymouth, Plymouth SoundLeave a comment

Same view this morning and a completely different reason for looking. Usually I am most interested in the stretch of water between the shore and the swimming buoys. Today my interest lies between the swimming buoys and the island. Later on today I am going on a Tamar River Cruise, not a booze cruise or a tourist cruise but a cruise to see sights of special scientific interest, historic interest and industrial heritage interest. A fact finding cruise on the challenges and projects that working in an area of outstanding natural beauty presents. For now though I am only bothered about the sea sickness quota that Plymouth Sound will serve me.

Looking to the east I’m feeling pretty confident that I will only see breakfast once today. This is a good thing in my opinion. Looking to the west no judgement could be made as everything was shrouded in mist but I am very confident that if the east looks good then the west will be in exactly the same mood. Who knows what shape tomorrows blog will take after an actual cruise, albeit 5 hours rather than days or weeks. For now though another view looking to the east, almost Mediterranean!

Pandemic Pondering #484

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Plymouth Sound, SerendipityLeave a comment

A classic ponder involving two subjects that are largely unrelated.

This morning I am wearing a playsuit. Really a preposterously named garment for anyone over 10. This one is left over from my brief days as a hands-on grandparent. Obviously when fulfilling the role of grandparent I felt the need to dress like a tropical forest. This may be the exact reason her parents decided to whisk her half way across the world. Who could possibly need a grandparent dressed as tropical forest when Asia can provide the real thing, the forest that is. The photos above are the tenuous link to this mornings blog. In case you haven’t spotted it, the mug swaggeringly hanging on my playsuit belt depicts a harbour. Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong. Our recent move has taken us to live among harbours, although not a Asian ones swanky enough to have thermal mugs depicting the skyline!

I love a harbour, all the glamour and thrills of travel with none of the faff. Today turned out to be a cornucopia of glamour. A cruise ship with 5 masts.

Shyly peeping into Plymouth Sound. Before hiding behind Drakes Island.

https://www.cruiseline.co.uk/cruise-lines/tradewind-voyages/golden-horizon/

If only I could briefly roll back time to when hundreds of ships like this were jostling to dock in Plymouth. On an olfactory note the area where I took this last photo was very reminiscent of times past. I stood on an area of concrete frequented by solitary fishermen and others in the twilight hours, they really do like to build up a historic fragrance, which was still resonating at 7 am this morning. Beer, tobacco, fish, piss and marijuana. Not perhaps the historic experience passengers on this luxury cruise liner are searching for!

Golden Horizon