107) "Mortal Coil" Sculpture

Yes, my first post of 2018. The thing is, I knew that if I was going to continue sketching around Port Talbot, I was going to start repeating myself. However I am so unreasonably pleased with this sketch that I decided that I just had to post this one.

Now, one of the very first sketches that I posted - I think it may even have been the second, was a watercolour sketch of "Mortal Coil" a sculpture by Sebastien Boyesen which is in the centre of the town by the post office. This is the sketch: -

Let's call a spade a spade, it really isn't great, is it. To be fair, I actually made this one two years ago in 2016, and it was my first attempt at line and wash. Also I hadn't yet found a sketching pen I really liked yet, and this was sketched with a Tesco biro, and a child's cheap watercolour set on very cheap paper.

Well, I've groped my way forward with watercolour since, and although I'm by no means the finished article yet, not even close to being, I think that I have made some progress in two years. Today I had another go at "Mortal Coil" and this is what I came up with: -

Now, this was made on better quality paper, with a better sketching pen, and a set of Daler Rowney watercolours. so it should be better anyway. Yet I think it's a better composition, better sketched and better painted. That's my opinion, anyway.

105) Telephone Exchange - Eagle Street

I mean, I presume that this building, next to the Royal Mail sorting office, is still a BT telephone exchange. In terms of architecture, well, it's 50s'/60s isn't it. And as such, far from inspiring. In some ways it is similar to the old Police Station, which has been knocked down since I made this sketch - 39) Old Police Station
To the right, you can just see the back wall and the roof of the Plaza Cinema on Talbot Road - as of November 2017 still nothing has been done with it.

104) New Bus Station - Station Road

Yes, it's not just the railway station which has been built anew. The second part of an overall plan to create a transport hub in the centre of town here is the building of a new bus station to replace the old one - pictured here - Old Bus Station . 

As you can see, it seems to me to be nearly complete. There are posters in the billboards by each stop - mind you, they have been there for a while now. I will be honest, I don't know exactly when it's going to open. Work began on 3rd October last year, and was only scheduled for about 12 months, so it can't be long now, hopefully. 

94) Garage behind Talbot Road

Over the years I've had a number of second hand cars - in fact my current car is the first ever one I've been able to buy new. So much for teachers' exorbitant salaries, eh? Over the years my wife and I have had to adopt a 'make do and mend' attitude to keep a succession of used cars going for as many years as possible, and this particular garage has been a godsend. It's a little bit of a hidden gem, since it's situated in a back alley between a main road, and the main railway line. 

81) The 11:49 to London Paddington, Port Talbot Parkway Station

Since 1991, when I passed my driving test, I've always driven back to London and to my family in England, rather than using the train. With a car full of kids it was always a hell of a lot cheaper than the train. Still, for the first several years I lived in Port Talbot the train was very much the preferred option over the National Express coach. It's a funny thing that this is towards the Swansea end of the same stretch of line on which I used to spot trains near West Ealing station, a couple of miles outside the London Paddington Terminal. 

There's been a station here since 1850. In 1984, a couple of years before I first came to Port Talbot, it was renamed Port Talbot Parkway, largely because it had acquired a large car park. A large and very expensive car park, I might add, which I have never seen with more than a very few cars in it. 

55) My Back Yard

I was babysitting the grandchildren, my sketchbook was within easy reach, as was my sketching pen. The children of course don’t stay still long enough to be sketched while they are awake. They love playing in my garden, so this combined looking after them with making a sketch. Everybody’s happy.

31) Aberafan Shopping Centre

Prior to my visit to Prague it would never have occurred to me that I might make a sketch of the shopping centre. Yet it seemed an obvious thing to do after I’d started sketching the town again after my return. The shopping centre is probably the most obvious result of the town centre redevelopment in the 1970s. When you look at books of old photographs of Port Talbot centre, it’s easy to become critical when you see the buildings that were lost. However, talking to people who lived in the town at the time, it is a fact that a level crossing not far from where the shopping centre stands now used to cause huge traffic problems in Station Road.

20) Station Road from the police station

Right after I returned from Prague I didn’t start sketching the town again straightaway. What I did do was to start going out in my car to places like Brecon, Laugharne and Cardiff, and to make sketches there, using the same approach that I’d used for many of my sketches in Prague. By the time I sketched this one I’d come to the conclusion that I should be sketching whole scenes, which placed individual buildings within their true contexts. I should be sketching the town, not concentrating on the pretty stuff to the exclusion of everything else. I should be using figures where possible. If you compare this one with sketch 7, my previous sketch of Station Road. This was sketched from the eastern end of the road, by the old police station

100 Faces of Port Talbot: My Challenge

My name is David C., and I am a compulsive sketcher.

Since I discovered it as a concept, I've been urban sketching for about a year now. For much of that time my sketches had focused on what I think could be fairly described as ‘nice old buildings’, many of them in Port Talbot, South Wales, where I live. Now, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, as you'll hopefully think when I start posting my sketches. But something happened to me in March and April which made me think again about sketching.

In late March I was diagnosed with clinical depression. A few weeks later I made a long planned visit to Prague, and basically spent most of my waking hours in the city producing sketches. In some of the sketches, I moved from just trying to sketch single buildings, to trying to sketch whole scenes, including figures, and I could see how much more of a story they told than what I'd been producing up to this time. 

I don't want to suggest that the medicine I took didn't help. It did, and I'm sure it's far more responsible for my recovery than anything else. However I'm sure that sketching was also an important part of it. Since returning from Prague, I've been sketching more regularly than I ever did before.  I’ve also been trying to widen my repertoire, and show not only whole scenes from Port Talbot, but other sides of the town. Warts and all is a phrase I use a lot, and I think it’s a pretty good way of describing my attitude now. Basically, if it tells any kind of story about the town as it is now, then it’s a worthwhile subject.

A couple of days ago I was idly looking back through the sketchbooks I’ve filled, and on a whim I began counting how many sketches of Port Talbot I’ve made. It turned out that I’ve reached fifty. I felt unaccountably pleased with myself, and then I began to think. It’s pointless to think that you can tell the whole story of a town even just concentrating on the here and now in sketches. It’s a never ending task. Still, the fact is that I feel that I’ve only really just about started. There are so many more things, more aspects of the town that I want to sketch.

With this in mind, then, I have set myself a challenge. Over the next weeks and months, I want to make another 50 sketches of the town, with the aim of answering the question – What is Port Talbot? – in 100 sketches. I have this idea of making 99 by the middle of December, and then using my last sketch to show the Christmas decorations, or maybe Santa’s grotto in the shopping centre. Will it happen? Well, I’m halfway there already.

So, in the next fifty or so posts I'm going to show the sketches I've already made, and then post each one which follows. That's the challenge.