97) J.D.Wetherspoons Lord Caradoc

An impulse sketch this one. Two of my daughters told me that they were taking my grandchildren out to breakfast at Wetherspoons, and would I like to come. On a whim I took the A4 sketchbook with me, and I made this sketch of the interior of the bar/restaurant while the nippers were chowing down. I think my daughters were a little put out that I was concentrating on the sketch so much, consider my wrists duly slapped. As for the name of the bar, well Caradoc ap Iestyn was reputedly the first Lord of Fan, who built the original motte and bailey castle, commemorated in the names of nearby Bailey Street and Castle Street. 

76) Gibeon Congregational Church, Taibach

I found this building while I was looking at the former Picturedrome Cinema (Number 71) Former Picturedrome Cinema, Taibach).

To be fair, Port Talbot is not short of a choice of places of worship, but of the older ones, this is one of the best looked after – well, judging by the exterior, anyway. Sometimes you start to research the places that you’ve sketched and it’s relatively easy to find basic details about when it was  built, and any significant happenings involving it. Then other times you just end up drawing a blank, as I did with the Gibeon. I used this sketch for a demonstration of method that beginners could use to construct a sketch of a building, which is why you might notice pencil lines on this one. Normally I don’t use pencil at all when I make a sketch now.

73) Swansea - London Mile Post, Margam

This mile post was installed in the 19th century when the main Swansea to London Road, now known as the A48, was made into a turnpike. This one just stands by a bus stop, near the corner of the road, minding its own business. It’s one of several still standing, each of which has been grade II listed. I used to think that they were carved stone, but actually this is not the case, since they were all made of cast iron. You can actually find one in the open air Museum of Welsh Life just outside Cardiff. On a personal note, I moved from London in 1986, and although I’m perfectly happy to be living in Port Talbot now, for quite a long time this post did serve as a reminder of just how far away my ‘home’ was. I’ve always liked the look of it though.

64) Checkouts in Aldi, Taibach

I wanted to sketch this one because it illustrates a change which has happened in terms of shopping in Port Talbot. When I first moved here, Tescos was the only ‘big’ supermarket in town. Yes, there was a Coop Pioneer store in Sandfields, but that was a bus ride away. When Tesco built their new store in the 1990s, they were really the only game in town. However, a significant proportion of that game has been taken away by an Aldi store which opened in Taibach a few years ago. I just wanted to make a sketch which illustrated the place, and also gave a hint about the basic problem with Aldi – people buy trolleys full of stuff, and despite the multiple lanes of tills, only one or at most two are ever open. Cuts down costs, I suppose.

59) Town Centre Stone Bridge Canopy and Tescos

Here we are then, the first sketch I've made since making the blog. 

You can't really see it from this picture, but the canopy in the centre in the background of this sketch was erected over the Aberavon Bridge as a Millenium project. The bridge itself was originally buit in 1842, and widened in 1893. It was grade II listed in 1979 as a particularly good example of that type of 19th century stone bridge. The bridge links what was once Bethany square, and the junction of Station Road and Forge Road with the open area flanked by Ebenezer Chapel, the Civic Centre/ Princess Royal Theatre complex, and the Aberavon shopping centre. The building under the scaffolding on the left is Aberavon House, a dour 1970s office block and one of my least favourite buildings in the whole town. It is currently undergoing renovation, and one presumes an attempt to improve its appearance. Good luck with that. There are things you just can't polish. You know what I'm talking about. 

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.

50) Neath Port Talbot Hospital Car Park Sunday Car Boot Sale

This sketch brings up the halfway mark.I remember talk about building the hospital here on Baglan Moors as early as 1986 when I first moved to the town. A mere 17 years later it was opened, in 2003. The hospital car park hosts a car boot sale every Sunday morning from the late Spring until the early Autumn. This is another busy sketch, but that’s par for the course considering the subject matter.

49) Arriving at work in Ysgol Bae Baglan - 7:15 am

This is another personal sketch. It shows the edge of the school building, and gives you just a hint about what a remarkably modern piece of architecture the building is. My two colleagues were unaware that I was sketching them as they walked.

48) The Rolling Mill Public House, Cwmavon

Here’s an old Port Talbot quiz question. Which was the first pub in Port Talbot opened after the end of World War II? Answer – this one, the Rolling Mill in Cwmavon. It takes its name from part of the steelworks.

47) Tata Steelworks

A few years ago a new road was opened to enable traffic for the steelworks, Sandfields and the docks to avoid having to drive through the town. This road also provides the best close up vantage points of the steelworks. This sketch shows the tops of the blast furnaces, which are in their own way just as iconic structures for the town as are the three cranes in the docks. This is the only sketch so far in which I’ve used both sepia and black pens.

46) Talbot Athletic Ground

This picture was another which I made from the top of Tydraw Hill. The sports ground you can see is the Talbot Athletic Ground, the home of Aberavon RFC. I liked this view because, as well as taking in the rugby ground, it also looks out to the docks, and gives you an idea of just how close we are to the sea even in the centre of the town. On another personal note, the rugby club is important to me, since it’s the venue for a Thursday night quiz which I regularly play in, and set questions for from time to time.

43) Aberafan Shopping Centre Interior

I sketched this one surreptitiously while leaning on a square column on a Saturday morning at about 9 am. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the interior of the building is extremely attractive, but if I can say nothing nicer about it, at least it’s a light and airy space, eve when it’s full of shoppers a little bit later on in the day.

41) Ysgol Bae Baglan Car Park

This is a more personal one. I am an English teacher by trade, and I spent my whole career up to this academic year in a school in Neath. It has been amalgamated with two Port Talbot comprehensive schools and a Port Talbot primary school, and we are all now teaching inside Ysgol Bae Baglan, a brand new, state of the art facility. This is the view of the car park and out towards the hills and Swansea Bay which you can see from my classroom window. I hasten to add that I sketched this on a lunchtime and not while I was trying to teach a lesson!

38) Old Railway Bridge, Velindre

I mentioned in my comments about the sketch of Velindre Bridge from Tydraw Hill that there are only two ways in and out of Velindre. This is the second. The old bridge used to carry a single track railway line which I believe ran from the Afan Valley to the docks. The road out of Velindre runs underneath the bridge.

35) Tesco Car Park - Shopping on Sunday

I sketched this one from my car, while Mrs. C. was taking care of a little bit of Sunday shopping. When I first moved here it just wouldn’t happen – the supermarkets didn’t open at all. I like the sea of car roofs here. In the distance you can see the back of the Ebenezer Chapel, and the main building that you can see houses the Civic Centre and the Princess Royal Theatre. This Tesco was actually built on a huge open car park – they were able to build the whole supermarket and it still left them with a very substantial car park of their own.

33) Tydraw Hill

To make this sketch I walked a few yards down the road towards Velindre from the position where I made the previous sketch, and took a photograph. I made a Youtube video on which I challenged myself to make a sketch based on the photograph in no more than 15 minutes. Bearing in mind the time constraint I set myself, and the fact that I don’t sketch particularly quickly I don’t think that this is actually a bad effort. Given more time, though, I would have either included more shading and detail OR I would have applied some water colour to it.

32) Velindre Bridge from Tydraw Hill

I used to live in a part of Port Talbot called Velindre. It’s not far from the town centre – a five minute walk really, but there’s only two ways into the area, which actually gives it a sense of community and almost a village feel. Coming from the town centre you have to cross a bridge to get there. When I first moved to Velindre in 1987 it was a very nice stone bridge, which has since been replaced with an inoffensive metal affair. This sketch was also made from my vantage point on Tydraw Hill, and shows the former Glanafan Lower School building.

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.

28) J.R.Motor Spares building, Talbot Road - line and wash

We’re back on the A48 out of town here, the same road that is home to the Plaza, Taibach Library and Ffrwdwyllt House, all of which featured in earlier sketches. JR Motor Spares is housed in a building I like. I’m not sure when it was built – my guess is the 1920s, but I don’t know for certain. Judging by old photos I’ve seen there were buildings of a similar style in Aberavon which were demolished to make room for the town centre.

24) Cyclists on Aberavon Beach

Both of the previous sketches were planned sketches, in the sense that I went to both places knowing that I was going to create a sketch, and pretty much what I was going to include in the sketch. This one wasn’t. It literally was a caught moment in time, when I had to work like the clappers to make these simplified sketches of the cyclists, and then sketch in where they had been once they’d gone. It’s an impulse sketch, and so much the better for it. This is the eastern end of the promenade of Aberavon Beach, and it’s a great place to cycle. Having the steelworks in the background is an added bonus as well.

You can see that this sketch marks a development in my attitude to what I choose to sketch, and the ways I choose to show the town, since it’s not about a man made structure at all.