Wet in wet practice piece a sunset over the coast.

Thought that I would try something different for this months challenge!

This is one of the many features of the landscape garden at Painshill Park near Cobham in Surrey England.
Painshill was created between 1738 and 1773 by the Hon Charles Hamilton, 9th son and 14th child of 6th Earl of Abercorn. A painter, plantsman and brilliantly gifted and imaginative designer, he dedicated his creative genius to the layout and composition of a landscape garden which was unique in Europe and still remains so.
Gothic Tower
Built in the late 1750′s in imitation of a medieval watch tower, and sometimes referred to by Hamilton as his castle, it was neither intended nor ever used as a signal tower.
I have worked in the park in the past my contract was to paint [as in the redecoration sense] a Chinese bridge over the lake some of which we did by floating about in a punt on the water!There is also a Turkish tent, waterwheel,hermitage and a fantastic grotto which has been restored over many years as funds allow take a look at the website.

http://www.painshill.co.uk/The-Park/The-Story-of-Painshill.aspx

Great place to visit if your in this neck of the woods but pick a sunny day for the best panoramas.
The tower really does have a fairy tale feel about it!

Winsor and Newton bijou water colour box and moleskine journal in a leather cover from Renaissance Art.Watercolour

Buildings on the south bank of the Thames near Tate modern. Apologies if you have seen this before but I was trying to load something else and could not get it to work knowing this works proves its something wrong with the other file

A picture done at a life group using an A3 water colour moly, then photographed using Nikon D70 [Scanner not big enough] File size has come right down from 1.7MB to 370kb Not sure how I did it yet!! The colour is all wrong but this is down to poor photography.So I can now post pictures from my A3 moly using this method.

One end of the line!
This is a phone that features in a photo my dad at work in a telephone exchange in the 1950s.It was liberated when it became really obsolete and now sits in my Mums office at home. Its one of those things that has been around in all of their houses, I played with it as a kid and so did my sons.

These are a couple of the mills that used to be along the river Wandle in south London. Draw from a photo taken in 1896 on the left is Ansells Snuff mill which stopped work in the year the photo was taken and on the right is Denyers flour mill.The buildings on the left still exist. A snuff mill is not some sort of killing machine but a thing to grind up tobbaco so that it could be snorted via the nose…NICE!!!! But very popular at one time.
I struggled a bit with the water on this one, not one of my strong points.The river Wandle used to be one of the best trout streams in the south of England before the harnessing of its waters to power all the mills along its length.Recent attemps to reintroduce the trout have failed due to the skill of local kids at fishing them out as soon as conservationists can put em in!!

This is the old smithy [forge] at The Weald and Downland open air museum atSingleton near Goodwood in Sussex [uk].
The museum dismantles and rescues buildings of historic importance and rebuilds them in the rural setting of the museum.Some are made into villages or streets.
The buildings are fascinating, there is a watermill that mills its own flour that is then sold on site,a medieval farm house, carpenters workshops,barns charcoal burners hut etc etc.
The smithy is from a village called Southwater and is in daily use by the resident blacksmith who makes and repairs all manner of metal objects for the museum.
Its a great place to go and is brilliant for those artists who are into buildings, several staff dressed in traditional costumes are available to give the talks and demonstrations of ancient skills such as Elizabethan cookery Bodging [making chair legs and braces using pole lathes].
The round mill stone thing in the foreground of the picture is used to put a cartwheel on while its red hot iron rim is fitted, water is then poured over it to shrink the rim to the wheel and hold the spokes in place.
I may do a few more of the buildings using the photos that I took.May try a watercolour even!

This is my entry for bleak, I am not sure if its bleak enough!
Its an old coast guard post at Dungeness on the south coast of England.This area has a lot of old railway carriages that have been turned into homes they all lie in the shadow of dungeness nuclear power station on a massive area of shingle [the largest shingle habitat in the world] it is a weird but fascinating place the wind rips across the exposed landscape and the waves make a fantastic noise as they roll the stones back and forth and its one of those places that seems to have a “big sky” that Artists talk about.
Take a look at it on the web.
Film producer Derek Jarman lived here before his death and had a garden amongst the shingle that was well known.
A site well known for its bird life and sea fishing.The sea is just beyond the shingle ridge behind the buildings.