106) Santa's Grotto - Aberavn Shopping Centre

Yes, the year moves on , and the decorations are already out in the Aberavon Shopping Centre. To be fair, Santa's Grotto, although ready, isn't actually open yet. When I first moved to Port Talbot there would always be a parade on a Saturday at the end of November, when Santa would arrive at the station, then make his way along station road to his grotto on a float dressed up to be like Thomas the Tank Engine. That has happened for quite a few years sadly.

95) Aberavon Bridge and River Afan

I sketched the canopy of this bridge and the Tesco store to the left of it before - 

Number 59) Town Centre Stone Bridge Canoy and Tesco

However I wanted to make a sketch where the bridge itself was featured more clearly. The stone bridge is a grade II listed building, and makes the link between the shops in Station Road, and the Aberavon shopping centre and the Civic Centre/Princess Royal Theatre. 

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.

60) Baglan Shops and library

Baglan is a very nice residential area, largely perched on a hill side at the west of the town. In fact Baglan touches onto Briton Ferry, which is the easternmost part of Neath, the neighbouring town. These buildings are in the centre of Baglan, together with a social centre, Baglan library and a park. Baglan is one of those areas of the town which has the feeling of a leafy village, although a much larger village than Velindre, since there are over 6000 people who live here.

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. 

58) Glanafan School Demolition

Glanafan School was Port Talbot’s Grammar School until the move to comprehensive education. It began life as the Port Talbot County School in 1896. Glanafan was one of the three schools which merged to form the school in which I now teach, Ysgol Bae Baglan. The school was important to me because it was in Glanafan I did my teaching practice while training to be a teacher in 1986. More than that, all of my children attended Glanafan for five years each.

This brings us up to date. From now on, every sketch has been created since starting the blog.

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.

40) Nat West Bank Station Road - Line and Wash

I made a video of the way that I made this line and wash sketch. Some you win . . . I know it’s not great. As I said, sometimes I just don’t get colours, even though it’s not for the want of trying.

36) Station Road and canopy

This side of station road has had its own steel canopy since the 1980s, although the original structure was replaced by this rather less obtrusive and more elegant affair.

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.

34) Port Talbot Saturday Outdoor Market

This is one of the ‘busiest sketches I’ve ever made. Every Saturday morning a market takes place in the main car park behind the shops on Station Road. When I first moved here all those years ago the market was a big event. It’s a long way past its heyday now. A few genuine market stalls are still clinging on, but there’s a lot of blank spaces where there used to be stall, and many of the stall that are there are really car boot sale stalls. Still, the whole thing still made for a lively enough scene, in which the figures are just as important as the stalls, if not more so.

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.

21) Station Road , Consitutional Club and figures

What the previous sketch lacked was figures. There is actually one figure walking along the road, but it’s really difficult to see unless you know where to look. This sketch of the Con club includes several figures, and it’s far better for it. It isn’t perfect – I wish I’d decided to edit out the foliage, but it is at least a truthful scene since the trees are there. I mentioned Urban Sketching as a concept and movement in the introduction post. One of the tenets of the movement, enshrined in its manifesto, is a dedication to capturing moments in time, and the figures for me do the trick of making this sketch just that.

You might also notice the figure on the right is cut off by the edge of the sketch. I like the feeling it gives of someone actually walking away off the page, and it's a feature I've used more than once since making this sketch. 

14) Kash Supermarket, Bailey St., Aberavon

Unless you know what to expect, when you see the Kash Supermarket for the first time it should come as a bit of a surprise. Most of the old shops and commercial buildings in Aberavon were demolished during the 1970s remodelling of the town centre. Bailey Street is a very quiet, small residential street, amidst other quiet residential streets and absolutely not the kind of place you'd expect to find a minor art deco gem like this one. I believe that the building was built before World War II as a Co op originally. Incidentally, Bailey Street is so named because it stands on the location of the bailey of the medieval castle which stood there once. This also explains how nearby Castle Street got its name.

7) Station Road

This is the first of several sketches that I've made of Station Road, which was effectively the High Street, and the main shopping area of Port Talbot until the Afan Shopping Centre was built in the 70s. The main building shown here is Dewi's Estate Agents. I think that you can see that this is a development from the three earlier sketches, since it's going beyond sketching just one building, but instead using part of a whole street.

It's probably fair to say that Station Road has seen better days, but it still boasts a collection of quite imposing buildings from the 19th and 20th centuries. Personally, I think that this is what a town High Street ought to look like. As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote - "Glory be to God for dappled things".