This dragon is called Pit Dragon Dai and is a miner to celebrate the coal mining history of the Welsh Valleys.  The artists are Beth Downing and Valerie Harding.

This one is called The City and the artist is Amelia Thomas.   Not sure if you’ll be able to see it properly on this photo but it has a funky cityscape painted on it.

The Council also installed these spherical fountains in the square.  I do like the reflections you get!

On the announcement of its coming, Newport Council desperately tried to improve the image of the city, and planned ambitious shopping centres and other developments to entice visitors into the town and away from the more appealing neighbouring cities of Bristol and Cardiff.  Residents suffered the upheaval of roadworks and building sites for months, nay, years; and just as it looked its ugliest, along came the recession and the mall developers went bust. 

To brighten up the place, over the last few months lots of decorations, flags and other colourful stuff has been appearing.  As well as this, lots of little Superdragons, painted by local artists and schoolchildren, are forming a trail around the town.  They are only here till 9 October and there are about 100 of them so I’ve decided to try and photograph them all over the next few months and post photos of them here.  Quite a lot are in the town centre so they will be easy to reach but several are on the outskirts too.

This one is called the Steel Wave Carousel (because it has a design of the red steel wave sculpture by the riverside) and is by Danielle Mayer.  It is standing outside the Civic Centre, just down the road from my house.

This is the wave – it was built to celebrate the steel industry which dominated Newport earlier this century.

This one is Scrum the Superdragon painted by Tim Harries.  It is in the main shopping street.

And this is the Wood Dragon, by Chris Wood. It is in the entrance to the library and museum.

According to the local council website, after the 10 week superdragons trail, many of the SuperDragons will be auctioned on October 27, with proceeds going to charities Tenovus, the chosen charity of Newport’s Mayor Cllr Bill Langsford and the Born Free Foundation. There’s a website about them and also a Facebook page where you can keep track of which have been, sadly, vandalised and removed temporarily for intensive care…

I like the new occupants of the city, even if they are only going to be around for a few months; they are a talking point and whenever I see them, there seem to be groups of people chatting about them, examining them and taking photos.   And the projects are encouraging local artists, local businesses.  Maybe that is the way forward for Newport; to build up local individual shops rather than trying desperately to attract big chain stores that you can see all over the country.  I for one would welcome that.

And if you really want to see what the city where I live is like, do watch this video – it’s a hoot!  And it’s going viral!  Every time I go on Facebook it seems to be there on people’s profiles and has even been picked up by the national press… Here is an article in the Daily Telegraph online

So… I decided that I really needed to buy one of those old lady gizmos which attach to your glasses and hang around your neck. I bought one which was pretty utilitarian and…. boring, really.  I remembered that I had loads of unworn necklaces and chains languishing unused in a drawer.  Eventually I found the right phrase to  Google – glasses chain findings – and a few minutes on Ebay sent a set of 10 winging its way to my door for the immense sum of £2.

Hey presto!  Just the thing!  (sorry about the gawky grin – or should that be owlish? – I took the photo myself) with the camera sort of held out in front of me…

I started by stamping backgrounds on several pages, to get over the fear of marking the pristine white pages.

This one is actually a gold gocco print but it will do quite nicely as a background, too.  My theme is lines and grids so there will be plenty of them.

I also did an image transfer of this inkjet print of a photo of reeds – lots of verticals and a few horizontal…  This will provide some background as well for something on top.  Not sure what yet but time will tell!  This exercise showed me just how thin the paper is – as you can see, the pages are looking a bit distressed already!  I think I’m going to run with this; most of my work is pretty distressed anyway.  Or distressing…  I have painted gesso on a few pages to see how that works out, and I plan to glue a few of the pages together rather than replace them completely with thicker art paper.  Oh well, with one thing and another this will certainly look like a working sketchbook when it’s finished!  I have already exploited the thin pages by making marks with my parallel pens on the reverse side of a sketch, which show nicely through the thin paper.   I’ll try and remember to photograph that one next time.  And I plan to layer some of the pages with polyester organza.

This is one of the sketches I’ve done already.  I’m very into shadows at the moment, particularly over bridges and I like how the shadows from these girders on the footbridge almost form an enclosing tunnel.  They interact with the corrugated metal sides to form grids. 

This is a postcard sized piece of card which I think I’ll stick into the sketchbook later if I’m happy with it.  I drew crayon lines on to the card before making an image transfer of another photo – this one is of the shadow cast by an iron fence.  Not sure where I’m going with this yet and if it’ll end up in the book or not…

My eldest son sent me the link yesterday to this wonderful website called Clients from Hell with pages and pages of web designers’ experiences with clients. Have a look! From wanting pink text on a red background to expecting website coding for free ‘because it’s fun for you’, it kept me amused all evening.

Seen on my latest reeds photo session….. coming up soon!