Tag: castle

2022 calen­dar

My 2022 calen­dar is now ready – you can order calen­dars and prints of the artwork here.

Eszter­házy Castle- The Versailles of Hungary

Fertöd is also home to Eszter­hazy Castle, a baroque palace often called “The Versailles of Hungary”. The Eszter­hazy family were the ultra-rich landown­ers in west­ern Hungary and east­ern Austria, and have palaces and castles dotted all over the place. This wasn’t even their main palace. It’s now a museum with guided tours. The tour was all in Hungari­an, but luck­ily with an English crib sheet. 

Overnight in Brat­is­lava

I’m work­ing in Austria for the next few weeks. I’ve been visit­ing for the last ten years to run school work­shops. You spend a week in a local school running drama, creat­ive writ­ing, and some­times art or cook­ery classes as an English immer­sion programme. Every week you’re at a differ­ent school.

I normally take my DSLR, and sort out the photos after­wards, but I couldn’t find what I’d done with the char­ger. My phone has a very decent camera though, so I’m going to use that and post them as I go. I’ve become increas­ingly frus­trated with the way the FB and Instagram algorithms decide what people see and in what order. Everything’s jumbled up and got no context or order, and it makes seeing travel photos partic­u­larly frus­trat­ing. So they’re just going here, where they stay in chro­no­lo­gic­al order and in context.

Trogir

So here’s the last of my pictures from Croa­tia. This time of Trogir, a town up the coast from Split. I went there on the bus, on a whim really, and was glad I did.

Malces­ine, Lago di Garda

At the end of May I went on a last-minute trip to Italy by myself. I had given up my tenancy in London, because I was fed up of paying a small fortune to a land­lord who was unwill­ing to fix the seri­ous leak in the ceil­ing that was prob­ably going to bring the plaster down some­time soon, and a relat­ive asked me to house-sit. The house-sitting date then changed, but it turned out to be cheap­er for me to visit friends in York­shire, and then go on holi­day for a week than it was to extend my tenancy, which shows how ridicu­lous the prices are in London now. As it was a last minute thing, I had to go on my own. I don’t mind trav­el­ling solo though, I used to do it regu­larly for work, and trav­el­ling alone is better than going on holi­day with someone who doesn’t want to do any of the same things as you. (In my case, wander­ing aimlessly for hours and hours, taking hundreds of photo­graphs and eating a lot). I also got to re-read The Name of the Rose in peace.

Mont St Michel

I went to Mont St Michel last week for the first time in years. It’s a medi­ev­al abbey on an island on the border between Normandy and Brit­tany, about an hour’s drive from my mum’s house in France. We went there a few times when I was a kid, and the last time I was there was in the late 90s on a school trip. It has dramat­ic­ally changed since then.

There was some­thing a bit seedy and cynic­al about the place in the 90s despite the spec­tac­u­lar town itself. Buses and cars drove over the cause­way to the island, and parked in a decrep­it carpark on the shore, which had a tend­ency to flood. As you made your way up through the snak­ing medi­ev­al street to the abbey at the top of the peak, there were endless shops selling cheap replica hunt­ing knives, saucy post­cards and boxes of fire­crack­ers. It must have been a night­mare for teach­ers super­vising school groups.

Salzburg

On the way from Nieder­ös­ter­reich to Vorarl­berg I stopped off alone in Salzburg along the way. I had to change trains in Vienna, and after a week of hearty, dairy-laden alpine food I was very, very thank­ful to eat some dhal and chapat­tis at the station. I really, really liked Salzburg and would gladly return there. I don’t know what it is about the city, but it just had a really nice atmo­sphere. I arrived at about 5pm, found the hotel really easily, and dumped my stuff and went for a wander. It’s an old univer­sity town, with a castle perched on an outcrop of the moun­tain look­ing down. There is a stereo­type in Austria that people in Salzburg are snobby, but I found them friendly enough.

Print­able Castle

I drew this castle that you can cut out and fold. There are two pdf versions for A4 paper and US Letter. By the way, it’s delib­er­ately trapeze shaped rather than rect­an­gu­lar, so if you make it, don’t worry about one side being longer. 

Idly Draw­ing

Seeing as I’m meant to be an art student, I thought it was time I did some draw­ing. I feel rusty at draw­ing. Here’s a draw­ing I made earli­er sitting in the Castle Gardens after I signed on at the dole. Sign­ing on always puts me in a foul mood, there’s just some­thing about Chath­am dole office, but draw­ing in the sunshine made me feel a little better. I think the drawing’s a little bland though. I think I should’ve made the left tree black shaded too, for better compos­i­tion, but I was just draw­ing what I saw, one decidu­ous tree, and one ever­green.

Tint­a­gel- Mosk­va 5

My ex-boyfriend’s family used to go to Corn­wall every summer, and we used to join them, me usually lugging a whole load of photo stuff on the train down. These were taken at Tint­a­gel.