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Saturday 2 May 2015

UK SPRING TRIP 2015

 
We're home at last from our spring family visit to England and we managed to see all of our family during the 12 days we were there.
The trip started with the ferry from St Malo to Portsmouth which takes all day and is a very relaxing way to cross the channel.  This is a sketch I drew just before the boat set off but I didn't do any more drawing, can't think why although I was engrossed in a rather good book I was reading on my Kindle!

 
After a day of shopping at Marks and Spencer for our annual top up of new clothes and shoes we spent the night at a hotel in Winchester.  On Saturday morning we went to Bournemouth to the Russell Cotes museum to see an exhibition of Alphonse Mucha's posters and sketches. 

 
 If you don't know his work here are a couple of copies of his posters I have done in coloured pencil.  He was famous for his Art Nouveau posters and it was wonderful to see them for real, they are over 6 feet tall and printed in quite muted colours. There were also some of his paintings and sketches on display as well as some of his designs for household items like spoons.
 

 
We sat and watched a biographical film of Mucha's life and were amazed at the amount of other work he did, in particular a series of 20 enormous paintings of the history of his home country, Czechoslovakia, which he donated to the national museum before he died in 1939.  If you live in England it's well worth the visit to see this exhibition and the museum it is being held in is equally fascinating being a Victorian house on the cliffs overlooking the sea and filled with amazing collections of art and artefacts from all over the world. 
 

 
Our next rendezvous was on Sunday morning with all of Bob's family for his Mum's 'Christmas' get together which usually happens in the spring as we don't go to England in December.  We met all the brothers and sisters in law at a local pub restaurant for a delicious lunch after which we took Mum back with us to the log cabin at Tilford we had booked for a week's holiday.

 
Tilford is only about 45 minutes drive from Mum's home so it wasn't too much of a strain for her and we had organised a bedroom with ensuite bathroom for her to make everything as easy as possible. 
Farnham town was only a short distance and we went in several times to shop and enjoy a coffee in the sunshine.  We were very lucky with the weather, sunshine every day all the time we were there so we were able to sit on our veranda in the afternoons and I managed a few more sketches which I'll show you on the next post in a few days.

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