South Wales Urban Sketcher: One Sketch A Day 1

One Sketch A Day 1

What's It About?

Following a post in Liz Steel's blog in late March 2018, I began to reflect about why I find it so difficult to make a sketch every single day. I'm not sure that I actually answered that question, but I do think I answered the question - what would make it more likely for me to make a sketch each day. The answer to that can be summed up in one word - challenge. I found it easy to sketch every day when I was doing the 100 people One Week challenge at the start of March. So I've challenged myself to make a sketch each day for a whole year. To spice it up a bit as well, I've also challenged myself to improvise a verse which should be connected some way with the sketch.

There is a context to each of these sketches - they each illustrate something about the day when they were sketched. For brevity's sake, all I've included here are the sketches themselves and the accompanying verse, but you can read the story behind each in the appropriate blog entry.

26/3/18

Oh Surface charger
I hope you'll go
For longer than
Your expensive bro'

27/3/18

Oh battered shoes
Upon my feet
By 4 o'clock
Smell none too sweet

28/3/18

I laze around the live-long day,
And with your cares I take no truck.
Monarch, I, of all you survey
- So go and fetch my tea, you schmuck

29/3/18

Compared with its crackles
Clicks and squealing
Silence seems rather
More appealing

30/3/18

Chickens are mean
I've never been keen
On these brutal and vicious
Egg laying machines
They can scare with a stare
That turns weaker hearts green
There's just no denying it
Chickens are mean.

31/3/18

Seahorse, seahorse, don't you stop
Just let your flippers go flippety flop
Got no back legs, got no hips
Think I'd rather cod and chips

1/4/18

An Easter egg
All full of sweeties
Shame about
My diabetes

2/4/18

The rolling mills roll on,
Like incontinent dragons,
The furnaces
Belch forth rusty smoke
Iron ore and coke
Run deep in the veins of this town.
Where will we be
When all of this is gone?
Look down, look down
And hope that the rolling mills
Roll on and on.

3/4/18

A dinosaur lover called Ollie
Thought seeing their bones might be jolly
I took him to see 'em
In Cardiff Museum
Which didn't require any lolly.

4/4/18

Pour me a cup of coffee,
Rich and deep,
Strong as you like, and bitter
Who needs sleep?

5/4/18

The law don't help poor working folk
But it taught us, if we rise
That the rich don't take no prisoners
And they don't apologise
It's blood of honest working men
That stained the gutters red
And the ruling classes slept more sound
For the twenty who lay dead.

6/4/18

It don't take long
To cut my hair
Each time I go
There's less hair there
I'm not quite bald
I think that's fair
But on top there's
More skin than hair.

7/4/18

What can you say
For a shopping mall?
If you've seen the one
- You've seen them all.

8/4/18

Impassive figure on my note,
Were you just a sad old goat?
Did you suffer from some mania
Being Prince of Transylvania?

9/4/18

An empty rucksack
A promise of new horizons
New places
Strange words
Hard beds in cheap hotels
A reminder of who I once was
And might have been

10/4/18

A sea of disgruntlement
Or an oasis of anticipation?
Some going here
Others there.
Nobody wants to stay.

11/4/18

Water flows below this bridge
Moved by the maelstrom of History

12/4/18

Sun is on my back
And now that the wind has dropped
Feel the breath of Spring

13/4/18

They call you a Living Fossil

From where I stood, you looked

More fossil

Than Living

14/4/18

Life passes,
In all shapes and sizes.
My life is here
On the pavement before it
And I offer it to you
For Euros.

15/4/18

Young man
You'll not stay this way
I know
You'll grow
And learn
And all too soon
Become what you will be.
We'll see
How you will change
But all the same
Stay perfect, as you be.
For perfect's what you are
To me.

16/4/18

Pourquoi les batiments Normands
Sont si belles?
It would take a far wiser fellow
Than me to tell.

17/4/18

I am too old
A fossil from the chalk age
Too old to do something else
And too young to finish.

18/4/18

Not dragon,
Nor dinosaur
Not the stuff of legend
Nor a living fossil.
More than both
I am the stuff of nightmares
Made flesh.

19/4/18

The Sun is shining

And the world is kind

To give me such pupils

With young and eager minds.

20/4/18

There's pickings to be found

On the grass, on the ground

Everywhere, all around

It lies.

With my claws and with my beak

I will gather what I seek

I am neither shy, nor meek

No surprise.

So before my verse is through

I should ask, is it not true

- If I'm vicious, aren't you too?

Tell no lies.

21/4/18

An opera singer called Patti
-Among her own time's glitterati-
Donated this venue
That's generous, but then you
Might have to suspect she was batty.

22/4/18

Waves roll in
The tides of time grind and pound,
Lap and caress,
And against their surge
No light may avail.

23/4/18

Caesar, a general
Quite automatically
Fell for the charms of the
Queen of the Nile
Caesar, to please her, most
Undemocratically
Took a dictatorship
To make her smile

Caesar, a general
Sources historical
Say that he came to be
Viewed as a God
I will say this, and not
Uncategorical-
Killed by his mates he's now
Under the sod.

24/4/18

Oh Pepsi Max

I think it's time

To forsake you

For lemon lime.

25/4/18

Macbeth, when the kingdom he stole
Despite then achieving his goal
He just wasn't happy
His life became crappy,
And died with his head on a pole.

26/4/18

There is a voice,
That whispers when I'm low
That seeks to drag me further down
I know
That he will go.
My demon of depression.
Chatter on,
Chatter on,
One day you will be gone

27/4/18

I can still feel it
The sheer excitement
Of rumbling through Hades.
Tartarus and Elysium
Looked much the same
As we snaked through
Plague Pits
And Roman ordure
And surfaced within yards
Of spacecraft
And dinosaurs.

28/4/18

So many Saturdays
Mine is sketching,
His is a cappuccino and Facebook.
Hers, cod, peas, chips
And staccato gossip.

29/4/18

Faithful iron horse
In peaceful retirement
Her dreams are of diesel
And the hot, sticky tarmac
Of summer dock roads.

30/4/18

I am not a log
No, I am floating death
And wait for you
In the steaming rivers
Of Africa and Asia

1/5/18

My dream machine
Is only seen
To best advantage
In racing green.

2/5/18

Broad, solid,
Unchanging
Let in the future
For I will still be here
When it has come and gone.

3/5/18

I left Fate decide.
It took its course.
And it's coarse.

4/5/18

If at first you do not win,
Take your pen and try agin
If it does not work out then
Throw away your useless pen.

5/5/18

Sitting over the sea
looking back at the land
feeling as if nothing
can go wrong
Nothing seems to bad
when the sun is on your back
(except sunburn)

6/5/18

She bears Argus' eyes

with grace.

In bluer skies

She shines,

And although her flight

Like Icarus'

Is short lived

While it does

There are more eyes

upon her, than hers.

"It's half past ten."
Says Baby Ben
The sky is blue
My arms are red
My bald patch burning
On my head
My eyes are blinded
Arms are dead
But there's nowt
I'd rather do instead.

The little Buddha on the desk

Is really very wise
He knows the answer to the question
- Who ate all the pies?

Oh yes, oh no,

I know that seconds fly
But would a rose look
Quite so perfect
If you thought
It wouldn't die?

Born a son of the soil

A westcountryman,

An artisan.

Not especially well educated

In all ways, unremarkable.

Asking for little

And receiving less.

No soldier, but a baker.

Now, just a random number

And a name on a gravestone.

A pirate was a criminal
A taker, not a giver
These rotten bums
Were soaked in rum
When bidding timbers shiver.

Built on the sweat of the many
For the comfort of the few
Now, a free pleasure for all.
(Apart from the cappuccino
Which is bloody expensive)

Eurovision Song contest -
I do not mind the singing.
The problem is my waking up
To find my ears still ringing.

Alone, I am nothing
But I am not alone.
Alone, I'm worth nothing
But I am not alone
Alone, I achieve nothing.
But I am not alone.
And a million nothings
Are something.

Where are the Samaritans?

Look around

They are beside you

In front of you

behind

Look in the mirror

And let one look back at you.

I think an Isetta
Is really cool
So never mind
The ridicule

I coulda been a gymnast,
Although it may sound crazy
The only thing that stopped me

Was, I'm just too flipping lazy.

Racing is a business first
We know that's true, of course
Forgive me if I have to ask-

What's in it for the horse?

The grey bird sits
Inert but deadly
Waiting to make its way
Through hardship

To the stars.

Unreliable, slow
thirsty, and prone
to breaking down.
For all of that
Not only wines

Are vintage.

At night
In the dark
Do you play host
To the flickering ghosts
Of flickering ghosts?

There once was an actor called Bela
A frankly quite sinister feller
I'd not be surprised
To learn he resides
In a coffin he kept in his cellar

A wonderful thing is a pillarbox
It takes a long time just to fill a box
Whatever its size
I think you'd be wise

To admit that a mail box is still a box.

My tonsils gave me constant gyp
The Doctor said, "Let's get a grip,
It's time that you were sent, old Scout
To hospital to whip them out
I wasn't brave, just sad and glum
And made a fuss, and cried for mum.