Looking through my 2011 sketch book I came across these drawings of a very interesting old Invalid Carriage. The vehicle is a 148cc (one hundred and forty eight!!) HARDING CONSORT built between 1956-1966. It had a Villiers Engine.
Author: William
Hilda Ogden
For any fans of the long-running soap opera “Coronation Street” this lady will need no introduction. Hilda was a strong character in the soap and as such she caught my eye. Typically listening through the wall to find out what was going on next door, here she appears in her trademark curlers, scarf and apron.
After the Wedding Ceremony
I was seated in my car whilst waiting for my wife, when I saw these two young girls with their escort walking along the road towards me.
Flitting the Old Way
At a time before vans could be hired, how did you move household goods if you were moving house to another in the same locality? Well, you were able to borrow a cart to help you to complete the task, as I have depicted from memory in these paintings.
For those of you who have not heard the use of the verb “to flit” in this context, it’s a Northern English expression meaning: “to move house or leave one’s home, typically secretly so as to escape creditors or obligations”. Not all removals were “flits” to escape creditors or obligations….
View from Burnley Grammar School
From Aug 1971 – Aug 1981 as Head of Art at Burnley Grammar School for Boys, Byron Street, I had a wonderful view from the art room – which many of my pupils might remember. Here is an oil pastel I made of that view in 1973. The vibrancy of this medium remains fresh nearly 45 years later.
Colne Hippodrome Theatre
Two colour sketches, one in pastel and a more finished piece in oil, based on observations made whilst on the balcony of the Hippodrome Theatre in New Market Street, Colne.
Iron Structures
Here are a few drawings that I’m adding today that include metal structures – the industrial fabrications of rail, railings and a fire-escape on The Marlborough Hostel for the homeless, (for needy people who just wanted one night’s accommodation). The angular shapes, straight lines and the perspectives of the structures are always an interest for me to represent on the page – an exercise in translation which I can use later as features in more fully developed work.
A Gasper
Having loaded some shopping into my car my attention was drawn to the figure of an elderly man who was standing outside the entrance to the supermarket.
Italian Travellers
These travelling families allowed me to sit with them and make these drawings of them and their caravan, whilst I was on a camping holiday in Italy with my own family, as temporary travellers ourselves.
Continue reading “Italian Travellers”
The Disapproving Horse
Pastel sketch – circa mid seventies.
To make this unfinished sketch I was seated on a folding stool in a field hoping to make sketches of two or three grazing horses when behind me I felt a tugging at the cord of my anorak hood.
Continue reading “The Disapproving Horse”