Wednesday 6 October 2010

Dundry Hill

This is a view of Dundry Hill, south of Bristol. It is looking northwards, with the village and the church perched above the steep slope on the north face. The church was built by the city's Merchant Venturers, so that the crews of ships returning to Bristol up the Avon could see it. Apparently.

I'm glad I persisted; this version is much better than the first two attempts. I used Sennelier ink, diluted, on dampened paper, for the fields, and it was smoother than the watercolour washes I'd used previously, and I didn't need to mask out the details. So that was a lesson learned.


Thinking maps, John Lee, my rather professorial friend, tells me that his Map of Elizabethan and Jacobean Bristol (to which I have added a few modest contributions, though I was rather pleased with the Bristol eskimos story) has now had 5,500 views. He has added further sites and information. Why not have a look?


View Elizabethan and Jacobean Bristol in a larger map


5 comments:

  1. If only all maps were like yours Dru, then I wouldn't get lost so easily.

    Dom and J-M were so impressed with Bristol, they'll be going back for a second visit. Just think, we used to pass by on the motorway not knowing all of the treasures we were missing.

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  2. A map to help find all the mobile telephone masts, how interesting.

    A friend was a really successful local landscape painter, people loved his views of the local area for two reasons. One , he moved a few hills about in the background to "improve" on nature, nobody seemed to notice and two, electricity pylons were invisible to him so never spoilt his views!

    I suppose that is what digital photography was invented for, get rid of bits of reality which are just too much to bear!

    Caroline xxx

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  3. I don't know why, but your map reminds me of when I was in the 7th grade, and as a world geography project, I made a relief map of Eurasia, out of flour, water, and salt, and colored it with tempera paint. It was one of the most fun things I ever did in school.

    Melissa XX

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  4. Oh, it's delightful! :)

    I'm a huge map addict and a bit of an art nerd, so I'm always pleased to find some more nourishment.

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  5. Thank you, Anji. And it's nice to think that I'm spreading the word about Bristol- i remember some friends in Portsmouth who had only seen a bit of it and decided it was a horrible place. "You can't have seen the same city," I thought...

    Everything is beautiful, in its own way, Caroline! -actually, I left out the great rusting mounds of old cars that are scattered around the big buildings there on the top of the Down. So there was an element of selective truth. The masts are v useful to help a walker orientate themselves, of course.

    I made a relief map of the Teifi estuary, Melissa! -it was extremely accurate, but a bit of a daft waste of energy because I'd made the layers out of thin card, so the vertical exaggeration was more vertical understatement...

    Thanks, Nix!

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