A Break From Writing

 This week could have been better – since Tuesday work has been called off each morning because of the dreadful weather.  Each day I’ve tried to motivate myself to do something worthwhile whilst it’s rained. 

At the same time I wanted a break from writing.  I’ve done plenty this summer, and I’ve organised a lot of my writing and redrafted a lot of stuff I’d written-off previously and now it’s half decent.  So I picked up my camera and headed to Manchester.

A while ago I was inspired by All the buildings of New York, which is the blog of James Hancock, a New York illustrator.  I loved the website because I love New York.  Then I thought – what about Manchester?  I’m no illustrator but my degree is in Visual Arts, only more the kind of splash-paint-around kind of art.  So I gave myself an impromptu architectural tour of the city with a sketchpad and camera. 

The results are a mixed bag, but it was fun.  I had a few buildings I already loved, I’m no stranger to photography projects in the city, but when you go somewhere and really look for inspiration you often surprise yourself.  I always think drawing scenes makes you look harder too.  Don’t get me wrong the few pictures I’m including here were not drawn on location, they were drawn from the photos (it was chucking it down, give me a break!) but I was really looking.

I don’t know if anyone will check out James’ blog too, my style is nowhere near as good as his, I got caught up with perspective (I hate perspective) whilst he seems to be a bit more loose and free.

I struggled to get the windows in line, it reminded me of teaching art years ago and drawing the points on the board and lots of gridlines and rubbing out.  The kids used to hate it! In the end though it got me doing what I used to love and made me forget about writing.

At it’s worst I avoided the rain by popping into Home Sweet Home in the Northern Quarter for a cup of coffee.   I’d love to give myself a bit of a project doing some more art, even just doing more buildings of Manchester but with starting back at uni in a week or two who knows if I’ll stick to it.  What with my photography project too…

This is also a case of The-title-of-my-blog-made-me-want-to-be-more-artistic!  I grabbed at Manchester’s Artistic son because I do a lot of creative stuff, not just writing, but I realised after starting it I do tend to focus on one thing at a time! And for a while it has been writing.

So what would you like to see?  (and don’t say none of it!)  I’ve considered posting a bit of everything, a poem, a story, a picture and a photo, four posts a week maybe, but it seems a bit incoherent and all over the place.  Then there’s the writing advice, the updates with the project day zero, and general tit tat I like to post too.

And what’s your favourite building in Manchester?  My walk took me through China Town, the Northern Quarter, Cheetham Hill Road, Deansgate, Albert Square and St. Anne’s Square (Barton Arcade) Oxford Road, Market Street and about five other streets!  I think the Midland Hotel is my favourite.  The images here were coloured with paint, if anyone was wondering, and then processed through illustrator/photoshop to give them various different effects and erase the mistakes!  Thanks for comments

 The art gallery – A work in progress!