STATUE OF SAINT DAVID

I am fortunate enough enough to live in a beautiful part of Wales, not very far from the smallest city in Britain: Saint Davids (pop. c3000). Not sure about the rest of the world, but here a city must have a Cathedral to be recognised as a city. Appropriately enough, the city boasts the smallest cathedral in the country, named after the Patron Saint of Wales, Saint David.

   This cathedral is 'something else' and I intend to draw a series of Pen and Ink drawings of some of its features. Here is the first, the statue of Saint David.

                                         Saint David, St Davids Cathedral, Wales                      John Simlett
Pen & Ink on 300 gsm  Cartridge Paper
18  x 14 inches  (46 x 35 cms)

The monastic community was founded by Saint David, Abbot of Menevia (the Roman name for this area), who died in 589. The monastery was attacked by Vikings many times over the next 400 years.

Work began on the modern cathedral in 1123, but it was damaged by an earthquake (!!!) in 1248, and the cathedral all but destroyed by Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s'.

There were many attempts at restoring the cathedral over the centuries, but it wasn't until the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century that full restoration was completed. The Bishop's Palace, however, remains a ruin to this very day.

On a grammatical point: the apostrophe one might anticipate with Saint David's, is always omitted, and Saint Davids is always the correct form ......... but don't ask me why! 

GENISIS

I'm going to be doing a few more Pen & Ink drawings soon. The big one I'm working on will be ready this week. Many people forget, or didn't know, that in art Pen & Ink is my strongest 'suit' and that painting came later.

I have often been asked where I learnt to draw and it might come as a surprise to know that I never took an art drawing lesson in my life. I began my working life as a shipwright apprentice and as part of a 5/6 year apprenticeship I had to learn to read technical drawings. 

The ingrained need to draw was in me though, and in the evening I would draw as a hobby, but not artistically. From engineering drawings I would draw the object in 3D (an Isometric view). Whilst clearing my drawing storage I unearthed a really special specimen of my hobby drawing; a turbine:

You may notice the drawing is unfinished! The reason being, I was drawing it in a small top story apartment in Cologne, Germany on the night of 13 August 1961!! Two things happened that day, my second son was born in a German hospital ...and ... they began to build the Berlin Wall. I said I would never finish it, and 57 years later I still haven't.

The second drawing I want to show you is my most treasured drawing. In the last year of my apprenticeship, aged 20, I had to spend a few months in the Drawing Office with the draughtsmen (draftsmen). Here I was to witness what went on ... make the tea, and do all the odd jobs. 

Being me, I found myself a spare drawing table and began to draw  what I wanted to draw, from boat plans I found laying about. Here it is, finished in January 1959.

  

It's a big drawing, over 36 inches wide.

When I show you the tools available back then, you will see why I find modern drawing pens absolute effortless luxury

Here is THE Pen of the day. The thickness of the line was obtained by tightening the screw, which moved one blade in or out. Ink was placed between the blades by an eye-dropper.

Happy Days! Nostalgia's not what it used to be!