• Pot from Mycenae
    Pot from Mycenae

    We visited Mycenae while on holiday in Greece. The views were stunning, the size of it all was awesome, but what I enjoyed most was the museum and their collection of pots.

    The designs of the Mycenae period are quite sublime and I think we can learn a lot from the works of those masters. Their patterns are simple and beautiful, probably refined and refined and passed down from father to son over a long period. We only get to see what is left. How much wonderful stuff must there have been at the time.

    My poor, long-suffering wife and children obviously wanted to pop into the museum, look at the stuff and move on. I wanted to stay all day and draw the patterns. Taking photos or buying postcards is not enough. You have to trace the lines yourself and recreate the marks to really understand them.

    Many of the designs are determined by the brush and the way the brush works. You really need a brush to recreate the style. We use pens so much these days, because they are so convenient. What a hassle to get a brush out to draw! I must have a go with a brush myself and see what I come up with.

    Many of the designs would make lovely logos today. I wonder what the Mycenaen designers would have made of computers and bézier curve drawing. I’m sure they would have loved it. The simple shapes are very similar. So often I looked at a pot and thought how modern it seemed, as if the design had been drawn on Illustrator just the day before. Plus ça change…

  • Cathedral - Forest of Dean
    Cathedral – Forest of Dean

    All Saints Church in Newland is unofficially known as the Cathedral of the Forest, but if you ask people where the cathedral is in the Forest of Dean, most will think of the stained glass piece on the Sculpture Trail at Beechenhurst.

    I’ve known it for 20 years now and it has stood up to the elements pretty well. I visited it last week and took this photo. It was made to last. The glass is protected in a polycarbonate sandwich and has resisted the various air pistol pot shots and stones that have been thrown at it. But it looks like it could maybe do with a bit of a clean to get some green off it and there are a few white holes where the colour seems to have worn off.

    Some of the sculptures have had a hard time or have simply been stolen or had parts nicked. A new one was recently graffitied and the most popular, Melissas’s Swing, which was meant to be a place of quiet contemplation, is treated more like a theme park ride. At least they get people out in the woods and connecting a little with nature. You don’t have to go far off the way-marked trail to find you have the whole forest to yourself. I guess people are scared to get lost. I don’t think you’d be lost for very long. The forest is criss-crossed with roads and track.

    My new series, Monster Boy is set in a Forest not dissimilar to the Forest of Dean. Perhaps I should have a few walks and take a few pictures of the places that inspire the stories. Actually, that’s a great idea.

  • Oh dear. What has happened with the writing on Coronation Street. It used to be so well written, well observed and genuinely funny.

    Now the police are involved in every other episode and violence is the order of the day. It’s almost like East Enders.

    Plots either occur way too fast, (Ashley’s vasectomy operation was fixed up in an afternoon without any counseling – I truly hope that is not possible in the real world) or way too slow -surely someone would have realised that David Platt is a psychopath by now?