Angela's Caricatures On Holiday And At Home - And How To Rotate Them

In February 2019 I went on Susan Alison's art course at Writers' and Artists' Holiday at Fishguard in Wales.

Self-portrait drawn from memory with outline in black pastel. I remembered I had:

1 Blue eyes, 

2 Blonde hair, 

3 A wide smile or my mouth wide in repose, 

4 Red clothes. 

Later corrected using a mirror. I had forgotten I had 

1 A fringe! 

2 My eyebrows were not each an arc but had a kink in the middle. 

3 Finding and adding a darker yellow pastel enabled me to make the hair longer, varied in colour and more wavy.

4 The necklace should be a neat curve. Next time I shall draw around a saucer, or teacup, depending on the size of the drawing.

The love interest, Polly the Pretty Poodle, (she is a model) for my hero dog in my book, Larry, the talking Labrador, Catty Cat and Escaped Lions

Hey, ho, this picture is inserted into my post not upside down, but sideways. What can I do to turn it? 

In wordpress this would be easy. In blogger there is no symbol to click on. You have to go back to your photo editor and load up the new version of the picture to blogger.

Go into HTML (to the right of compose in blogger.com).

Alter the numbers for the size and shape and a plus or minus sign.

When I can get my head around this, I'll do it and demonstrate it to you.

Useful Websites

Rotating Images in Blogger

https://so-how-do-i.blogspot.com/2017/06/rotate-my-blogger-images.html

www.writersholiday.net

Author, Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Poems on the Underground, Art, and Maps

If you are passing through one of the larger stations in Central London look for the brochures in the racks on Poems on the Underground and Art on the Underground.

I had expected a leaflet about trains, but the leaflet I picked up was 'celebrating Irish poetry'. The poems included were by Yeats and Seamus Heaney. Something to read on the train, also to keep.

Poetry
tel.gov.uk/poems

Art
art.tfl.gov.uk
Facebook: /artontheunderground

The art includes tiles, mazes, quotations and drawings of the staff. I'd love to do caricatures of famous people associated with every station.

The larger stations such as Euston have a leaflet showing the station and nearby roads and buildings, handing for finding your way.

A map covering a large part of central London is inside the leaflet which has a bicycle on the cover and the title Explore London with Santander Cycles. The map does not show every road, just the main roads and a few prominent landmarks. But it did alert me to the Handel House Museum, showing the location near Oxford Street.

Every time I look at Poems on the Underground, or see one of the poems overhead as I'm sitting on the train, I get the urge to write a poem about train travel.

The Underground
by Angela Lansbury

The escalator goes down and down
The Circle Line goes around and around
Teenagers lives carried in big backpacks
Mums in jeans clutching babies on their laps

The city's veins in coloured maps
Recordings warn you, "Mind the gap!"
Mobiles put a smile on every face
The busker strokes a double bass

Commuters race past far too quick
To get their money's worth of music
You could spend your life in the underground
Where shops and cafés form a hidden town

Watch where lines cross and where they meet
Too soon upstairs in the neon street
Where gusty wind, or snow or rain
Make you long for the warm train home again.
Copyright Angela Lansbury 2016.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Saving travel photos and memories

You can save souvenirs of your travel trips in many ways.

PHOTO SLIDESHOW

Make your photos into a slide show using Powerpoint or Keynote (on Apple Mac laptops or iPads) or Mosaic. Starting with a title page and map, ending with a photo of yourself at home or unpacking souvenirs. Add music. Or recipes. Or a page of websites and addresses at the end. Or list your future or all previous trips.

WATERCOLOURS, SKETCHES & CARICATURES
I draw pictures of people I meet. I carry watercolour pencils. (Less messy and less time consuming than watercolour paints or oil paints. You can also take photos and draw pictures in the evening or after you get home.

PRINTS & TEE-SHIRTS
A print of your family with the car is useful if you often lose each other. You can point to your tee-shirt and ask, have you seen my husband, children, car?

EMBROIDERY
A lady in Singapore makes embroidery pictures of the places she visits. How could you do this? Print photos onto a tee shirt.

PHOTOS of HOTELS, RESTAURANTS, TOUR GUIDES, GROUPS