Meditations on a manhole cover!
I was drawn to study manhole covers from a website I came across on a friend's blog. Now these may not seem terribly exciting to many of you, but if you click on the link below(which show a wonderful gallery of manhole covers of France!), you'll find just how amazing some of the designs are and how much work has gone into their design. Though I do think the ones in France are rather more grand than our British ones! Still makes me think of a parallel with people. We overlook manhole covers, take them for granted, trample on them without even looking at them.

Some people often get overlooked, trampled on, taken for granted. If we would just look properly...take time...
(see http://www.manhole-covers.net )


Another aspect of manhole covers istheir man-madeness:

This is the oldest one I can find, my personal favourite, because it makes you realise that in the end even the toughest of manmade things eventually disappears and can't resist the gentle persistance of life as it grows around, under and even on it.

Here's a photo of the Island of Iona. This is taken from the little boat that travels across form the isle of Mull. it takes about ten minutes. The boat is the only means of getting to the mainland(well Mull anyway) from Iona, so there's usually at least a tractor or a cart load of supplies on it once a day. There are only about 9o people who actually live on this little isle. In the centre of the photo you can see Iona Abbey, which houses a whole community of staff, volunteers and visitors. As for the green splodges, I have no idea, I think they are bits of paint on my scanner! They're not on the photo! Oops! Must let things dry properly! I think, but am not sure that the white building to the left of the Abbey and behind the other white buildings is one of the two hotels on Iona. Columba, a missionary from Ireland, around about 563 AD landed on Iona along with his companions. Here's a link, http://www.iona.org.uk/abbey/

...and finally, the prettymuch-complete version, at least complete until I try improving it. That's the trouble, I think I've finished a cartoon, then I start to see all the little not-quite-right things, like for instance, I've used upper instead of lower case...so I might try changing that, and the writing could still be larger. Oh, and by the way, I used acrylic inks for the sky. a new discovery...though I could have brushed the sky more evenly. I'm still a beginner in acrylic inks...but they are really nice to work with. The stars are just dabs of tippex! (Actually Looking at it again maybe they look more like snow than stars...will have to work on that!) I have a vague memory that a great friend from years ago (who was from Minneapolis) told me that on the other side of the pond you call this 'white-out'. For all who wonder what Tippex is!













Here's the 'gone-over-the lines-again' version, and with the tail back to normal and an exclamation mark instead!



















I used one of my scanned copies to add the writing. As you can see, a scan/photocopy comes out really faint, so everytime I copy, I have to go over it all again! This takes about twenty minutes to do it carefully, and making sure the wet ink doesn't smudge. The originals are all A4 size.The brilliant advantage about scanning/photocopying is the fact that all tippex makes a miraculous disappearance! I also tried experimenting with the tail to try and show expression, but I didn't think it really worked!

...and here's a wild n'wacky one, hot off the press! Couldn't resist...after all, why should humans have all the superheros?

This is the same cartoon as one of those I posted earlier. Except that I have enlarged the writing. You've no idea how long it takes and how much tippex I use!

This was the sands and sea leading out of Rhyl towards Prestatyn earlier on today, at around 4pm. A little breezy, and the tide was on its way out. It's a great beach for long walks. For some reason, which I haven't yet fathomed, tourists never come to this part of the beach. believe it or not, just a mile Westish from here, more central to Rhyl, was crowded with tourists.