Now, in the interests of accuracy I think I should probably put it on the record that I'm not exactly a tram nerd. I don't spend my weekends going to tram museums, or visiting towns and cities that still have trams, in the way that I was a steam nerd when I was an adolescent. But I do like trams.
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| Tram - Boston Road - Charcoal - A4 SOLD |
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| Swansea Bay tram -c. 1950s - Watercolour -A4 paper SOLD |
It's a watercolour, which was unusual for me at the time. I decided shortly after that I prefer working in acrylic, but this was made in the summer of 2015 when I was just starting out. It's only years later that I've started to make watercolour paintings that I am actually at all proud of. The Swansea Bay trams were scrapped in the 60s, and the tracks were ripped up - a typically shortsighted action of the council.
Swansea Bay trams are a subject I've returned to a few times since. When I bought a set of small - 5x7in - canvases this was only the second one I ever did : -
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| Swansea Bay tram c. 1950s - Acrylic on board 5x7in SOLD |
I really like almost everything about this painting - apart from the fact that the back of the tram is not leaning as much as the front. Pretty big problem when you get right down to it. I like the way I've used colours in this - I like the composition, and I think that the wall in the foreground is rather good.
Both of these paintings sold at first time of asking, so you could forgive me for thinking that I'd found quite a lucrative subject to paint. Still, it was a few months before I returned to the subject with this second small painting of a Swansea tram: -
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| Swansea Mumbles Tram - SOLD |
As they do say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. So in June 2016 I returned to the subject of Mumbles trams again with the first time I painted one on a 12x10in board
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| Swansea Bay tram in the snow c. 1950s - Acrylic on 12x10 board NOT FOR SALE |
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| Swansea Tram Direct Watercolour 2021 SOLD |
Now I'd ask you to compare it with this picture that I
painted during the 2022 30x30 Watercolour Challenge. I promise you that these were both painted by the same person , because it was me wot painted them. As I write this it's only a few days since I painted it and it can take me quite a bit of time to be able to look at my own work dispassionately and critically. But I have to say that at the moment I am really pleased with myself for this painting. Remember that you do no preliminary sketching for a direct watercolour, just paint it straight onto the paper. I used an old black and white photograph from, I would say, the 1940s. By now I know the colours of Swansea trams, and then I used some different colour photos to help me with the background colours. As for the figures, well I chose the kind of colours which
they would have been wearing - brown, green or blue suits for the men, and the kind of pale blue or turquoise coats for the ladies that I can remember one of my grandmothers still wearing in the 1970s.
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| Mumbles Railway tram Direct Watercolour 2022 SOLD |
painted during the 2022 30x30 Watercolour Challenge. I promise you that these were both painted by the same person , because it was me wot painted them. As I write this it's only a few days since I painted it and it can take me quite a bit of time to be able to look at my own work dispassionately and critically. But I have to say that at the moment I am really pleased with myself for this painting. Remember that you do no preliminary sketching for a direct watercolour, just paint it straight onto the paper. I used an old black and white photograph from, I would say, the 1940s. By now I know the colours of Swansea trams, and then I used some different colour photos to help me with the background colours. As for the figures, well I chose the kind of colours which
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| Mumbles Railway Southend Stop Direct Watercolour 2022 |
they would have been wearing - brown, green or blue suits for the men, and the kind of pale blue or turquoise coats for the ladies that I can remember one of my grandmothers still wearing in the 1970s.
Just to prove it wasn't a flash in the pain my last direct watercolour for the 2022 challenge in June was this one of a tram car at the Southend tram stop in Mumbles. Again, based on a black and white photograph, this was a more complicated scene than the previous - what with the railings and the more detailed background. I did do some research into the colours of the tram stop for example, and of course I knew what colour a Mumbles Tram was, but for the most part the colour choices were based on - what do I think would work here?
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Now, if you think of trams in the UK, you will sooner rather than later be thinking of Blackpool. I'll be honest, painting this next one was a little bit cynical, since I thought that painting a Blackpool tram wouldn't just appeal to tram lovers, but also to lovers of Blackpool. This is another acrylic on 12x10in board.
Having been painted specifically to try to sell, this was the first ever painting I tried to sell on ebay. And to be fair, it worked. In fact within a short space of time I managed to sell about half a dozen paintings on eBay, including the watercolour tram we've already seen, and this probably gave me an unrealistic idea of just how easy it is to sell on ebay. Undaunted by recent failures to sell I painted another balloon tram on a small canvas board. Again, like my second small Swansea tram it really isn't a great painting. It wasn't for want of trying, but sometimes just just don't get it, and it just doesn't turn out how you wanted. For some reason I just couldn't get a smooth and even application of paint to the tram itself, and it looks streaky and unappealing. And despite my initial successes in selling small canvases, it looks as if they are not just as appealing to buyers as the 12x10 canvases are. I do still quite enjoy painting them though.
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I did mention that this was the tram on which I got to ride when I visited the National Tramways Museum. During that visit I took quite a few photographs, and in 2020 I used one of these photographs to help me sketch the tram again. Originally I was going to leave it as just an ink sketch, but then the next morning I looked at it and decided to add watercolour to it. You might be wondering why I didn’t paint in the sky. Good question. Sometimes even someone who knows as little as I do about Art can give a technical explanation for what I do. More often, though, it comes down to a feeling. I felt that this was enough – that if I pained in the sky, which was a light, fine cerulean blue on the day, it wouldn’t improve the picture, and actually might make it worse. I liked it as far as I’d taken it, and that’s enough. Which, when you get right down to it, is probably about as technical as you need to get sometimes.
This next one took absolutely ages. I found a photograph of a Lisbon street scene, and fell in love with it. It is such a busy scene that I made the decision to go with a 20x16 canvas. This is it.
It's probably the most ambitious painting I've tried to date, and it's certainly the most time consuming. I haven't calculated how many hours I spent on it, but there were quite a large number of two and three hours sessions across several weeks.
But I do like it, and if I'm honest I'm a little disappointed that I've not sold it yet. Maybe it's because it's a bit bigger. With hindsight, though, I guess it's maybe also because it doesn't have the connection with a specific British town or city, which has been the real pull of the other tram paintings which I have sold. Of, and before you say it, I know that this is more of a funicular railway than a tram. It's a fair cop, guv'nor.
This isn't a picture which I ever made with a view to selling it. It's just one of the things I sketched one day when I was out and about with my sketchbook.
There is a story that goes with this one, actually. It's part of the Swansea Waterfront Museum collection but housed in a separate building. I was sitting on a bench in the far corner happily sketching away, and when I finished, I got up to find that they had locked me in and gone off for lunch! A frantic phone call to the museum and my release was secured.
Back to Glasgow, and back to waterclour for this one. I used proper watercolour paper for this one, and tried to apply what I've learned from my own work in the last 18 months of so since I used watercolours. I quite like it - I've never been that good at subtle or delicate and this seems to me to be a step in the right direction.
It's actually a rather good demonstration of just how wrong you can be. Personally I don't think that this is as good as many of my acrylic tram paintings, and I didn't think it was a particularly good watercolour painting, so much so that I didn't try to sell it when I sold a few of its contemporary paintings. I put it on sale at the tail end of January in 2017, and it sold within days.
What were the chances of that happening? Well, I set out to find out by producing another painting, to see whether I could repeat the same trick with it. There are a few differences, obviously. Apart from anything else, this is a line and wash painting, while the previous one is pure watercolour. Also, although the tram is still the most prominent 'actor' in this painting, there's quite a lot else going on with it, as opposed to the previous one.
This next one on the left is a bit of an oddity. I started it rather idly one Wednesday evening to see whether I could just paint an acrylic picture straight onto a canvas without sketching it out in pencil first. The answer, it transpired was - yes, but not necessarily very well. I lost interest in it, and put it away some time in October, I think, and only came back to it the following February. The tram itself is okay, but I've painted better buildings than the one in the foreground before and since. I'd like to think that I've grown since painting most of this one, through using the watercolours and other media. I used a photograph, and it was only later that I came to realise that this is actually pictured at the Crich tram museum
This painting represents a return in several ways. It's a return to painting in acrylic, a return to painting a Lisbon streetcar, and a return to painting on a 16x12 in board. I based it on a couple of photographs taken by my artist friend Steve. I've never yet painted anything where I've looked at the finished work and though - now that's perfect, and accordingly there are places in this painting where I could pick holes in it. However, there's a lot of passages of paint on this which I'm really rather pleased with. I don't think I could have made a painting like this a twelvemonth ago. n fact it's interesting comparing it to the painting above, which was the last I painted (mostly) before having another go at watercolours.
Completing my hat trick of middle - European capital city tram systems in 2017, then , was Budapest. If they're not necessarily quite as big and impressive as Berlin's, most of Budapest's trams are still modern, comfortable, efficient, yellow in livery, and cheap, although in my experience the good people of Budapest were less obsessively determined to keep their tram's tidy. On two separate occasions I got on to a tram to find that there was a slice of half-eaten pizza left on one of the plastic seats. I did enjoy having the trams pass right in front of the hotel though, which I'd experience again when I visited Amsterdam.
For a long time I didn't go back to make an acrylic painting of a tram, although there was no real reason why this couldn't have happened in the interim. In January of 2018 I started making some ink sketches of steam engines in pen and ink, and it was ruing this period that I made this sketch of a Mumbles tram alongside an old double decker bus. I love the subject matter of this sketch, but another thing that I really like about it is that it's a greatexample of the sort of sketch that I make just for pleasure and leisure while sitting on the sofa, watching the telly with half an eye. I'll be honest, I can't for the life of me remember exactly what I was watching at the same time, but then judging by the fact that this is one of my better sketches chances are that I was paying a lot more attention to the sketch than I was paying to the television.
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| Blackpool Balloon Tram - Acrylic on 12x10in canvas board SOLD |
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| Blackpool Balloon tram Acrylic on 5x7in canvas SOLD |
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| Preserved Glasgow Tram - Acrylic on board 10x12in SOLD |
It was pretty much an accident the way that I came to settle on Glasgow trams as a subject. I'll be honest, with the first one I painted, I just really liked the generally Edwardian look of the tram, and I liked the livery of it as well. It's actually a preserved tram in the Crich Tramways museum. Coincidentally, several years after I painted this, I actually visited the National Tramways Museum. It isn't cheap, but you do get a tram ride in the price of your ticket. It turned out that my ride was on this particular tram. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
The tram itself is rather nicely painted, and the cobbles aren't bad at all. The less said about the foliage on the right, the better. It was this painting which really convinced me I needed to drastically work on my painting of foliage, and I'd like to think I've made progress since. I've never done anything quite so horrible, at least.
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| Glasgow tram at National Tram Museum Ink and Watercolour SOLD |
I did mention that this was the tram on which I got to ride when I visited the National Tramways Museum. During that visit I took quite a few photographs, and in 2020 I used one of these photographs to help me sketch the tram again. Originally I was going to leave it as just an ink sketch, but then the next morning I looked at it and decided to add watercolour to it. You might be wondering why I didn’t paint in the sky. Good question. Sometimes even someone who knows as little as I do about Art can give a technical explanation for what I do. More often, though, it comes down to a feeling. I felt that this was enough – that if I pained in the sky, which was a light, fine cerulean blue on the day, it wouldn’t improve the picture, and actually might make it worse. I liked it as far as I’d taken it, and that’s enough. Which, when you get right down to it, is probably about as technical as you need to get sometimes.
Hitting on Glasgow trams as a subject in this haphazard fashion though turned out to be rather a piece of good fortune, commercially if for no other reason than that. For there is still a huge amount of nostalgia amongst a proportion of the good people of Glasgow for their trams. Not unlike Swansea when you get right down to it. And why not? Glasgow's tram system was the beating heart and the circulatory system of the city for decades.
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| Add caption |
For all its flaws - I look at that horrible background foliage and still cringe a bit- my original Glasgow tram painting still sold at the first time of asking, and what is more the buyer liked it so much that he asked if I'd be prepared to paint another Glasgow tram, but this time in a real Glasgow Street. I promised to do so as soon as I finished the painting I was working on. The painting on the left here is what I produced.
Okay, putting my self-critical hat on, this is almost a pretty good painting. What I mean by almost is that this time I love the background. The shops - as well painted as I was capable of painting at the time. The buildings above - lovely work on the windows and stonework. The car, nicely rendered. The cobbles on the street- beautiful. Worth the two and a half hours it took to paint all of them. But the tram itself - oh, so close but no cigar. The proportions are out, Not massively, but enough so that you notice.
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| Top - Glasgow tram ink and watercolour SOLD Middle - Glasgow Tram Commission Bottom - Glasgow Street Scene with figure acrylic 12 x10in SOLD |
When you start painting, and to be fair I hadn't been painting for a year when I painted this one, a lot of the time you'll be unsatisfied with what you do, but it is a learning process, and every now and again you'll produce something which shows that you are improving and you are making progress. I don't say that the tram itself is any better than the previous one, but everything else in this photo definitely is. I can't say that there is one part of this photo where I feel angry with myself for not doing it much better. Part of it was taking a lot of time and trouble - for example I spent a whole session in the Artists' Group just working on the cobbles. And I think it was worth it because they worked.
And so, when I decided to extend myself by painting a tram with a figure in the foreground, it seemed a natural decision to paint a Glasgow street scene with a tram and a figure. I'm not so sure that I'm that fussed about the figure - but then I'm in the very early days of painting figures, so I have to have some patience there.
I drew on a lot of what had made the previous Glasgow painting successful in terms of the tram and the buildings. In fact, if you look at the two photos one after another you can see that they're almost companion pieces. And in a case almost of deja vu, the buyer explained that this was Cathcart Street in Glasgow, and commissioned me to paint a different and modern view of the street. But that's not a tram painting, so I shan't reproduce it here.
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This next one took absolutely ages. I found a photograph of a Lisbon street scene, and fell in love with it. It is such a busy scene that I made the decision to go with a 20x16 canvas. This is it.It's probably the most ambitious painting I've tried to date, and it's certainly the most time consuming. I haven't calculated how many hours I spent on it, but there were quite a large number of two and three hours sessions across several weeks.
But I do like it, and if I'm honest I'm a little disappointed that I've not sold it yet. Maybe it's because it's a bit bigger. With hindsight, though, I guess it's maybe also because it doesn't have the connection with a specific British town or city, which has been the real pull of the other tram paintings which I have sold. Of, and before you say it, I know that this is more of a funicular railway than a tram. It's a fair cop, guv'nor.
There is a story that goes with this one, actually. It's part of the Swansea Waterfront Museum collection but housed in a separate building. I was sitting on a bench in the far corner happily sketching away, and when I finished, I got up to find that they had locked me in and gone off for lunch! A frantic phone call to the museum and my release was secured.
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| Glasgow tram - SOLD |
It's actually a rather good demonstration of just how wrong you can be. Personally I don't think that this is as good as many of my acrylic tram paintings, and I didn't think it was a particularly good watercolour painting, so much so that I didn't try to sell it when I sold a few of its contemporary paintings. I put it on sale at the tail end of January in 2017, and it sold within days.
What were the chances of that happening? Well, I set out to find out by producing another painting, to see whether I could repeat the same trick with it. There are a few differences, obviously. Apart from anything else, this is a line and wash painting, while the previous one is pure watercolour. Also, although the tram is still the most prominent 'actor' in this painting, there's quite a lot else going on with it, as opposed to the previous one.
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| Glasgow Tram SOLD |
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| Lisbon Vintage Tram SOLD |
This next one on the left is a bit of an oddity. I started it rather idly one Wednesday evening to see whether I could just paint an acrylic picture straight onto a canvas without sketching it out in pencil first. The answer, it transpired was - yes, but not necessarily very well. I lost interest in it, and put it away some time in October, I think, and only came back to it the following February. The tram itself is okay, but I've painted better buildings than the one in the foreground before and since. I'd like to think that I've grown since painting most of this one, through using the watercolours and other media. I used a photograph, and it was only later that I came to realise that this is actually pictured at the Crich tram museum
This painting represents a return in several ways. It's a return to painting in acrylic, a return to painting a Lisbon streetcar, and a return to painting on a 16x12 in board. I based it on a couple of photographs taken by my artist friend Steve. I've never yet painted anything where I've looked at the finished work and though - now that's perfect, and accordingly there are places in this painting where I could pick holes in it. However, there's a lot of passages of paint on this which I'm really rather pleased with. I don't think I could have made a painting like this a twelvemonth ago. n fact it's interesting comparing it to the painting above, which was the last I painted (mostly) before having another go at watercolours.
This pen and ink sketch is the first tram picture I've created of a working tram that I'd been on myself. Well - sort of. I started the sketch with the tram itself, which I'd just got off in the centre of Prague. However it went, as they tend to, so I hung around, and used the next two number 23 trams of the same model which came to the stop to help me finish off that bit of the sketch. Thankfully they are extremely regular and reliable.
Here's another, closer up sketch of the same type of Prague tram. I find it difficult to explain exactly what it is that's quite so appealing about trams, but here's my thoughts based on my Prague experience. The trams in Prague seem to me to be an essential element of the city's public transport system. Every time I took the 23 tram into the centre of the city in the morning it was full of people off on their way to work. I loved the way that they snaked squeakily round very tight corners. I loved the regular service and the reliability. It certainly didn't harm that an all day ticket, which enables you to also travel on the buses and the trams, is incredibly cheap too. As a first experience of a city which a tram system that is at the heart of its public transport I'd say that it was a very positive one.
Here's another, closer up sketch of the same type of Prague tram. I find it difficult to explain exactly what it is that's quite so appealing about trams, but here's my thoughts based on my Prague experience. The trams in Prague seem to me to be an essential element of the city's public transport system. Every time I took the 23 tram into the centre of the city in the morning it was full of people off on their way to work. I loved the way that they snaked squeakily round very tight corners. I loved the regular service and the reliability. It certainly didn't harm that an all day ticket, which enables you to also travel on the buses and the trams, is incredibly cheap too. As a first experience of a city which a tram system that is at the heart of its public transport I'd say that it was a very positive one.
Now, like Prague, Berlin has trams which are cheap, reliable, and essential. However they are also incredibly modern. Due to Berlin's division in the second half of the 20th century, West Berlin phased out its trams, while East Berlin, presumably due to its poverty in comparison with the west, kept the trams. These have been updated since reunification, with the result that it's most former East Berlin that has the benefit of a fast, modern, clean, comfortable and inexpensive tram network. Even if the 21st century trams lack just a little of the charm of Prague's older, former communist stock.
Completing my hat trick of middle - European capital city tram systems in 2017, then , was Budapest. If they're not necessarily quite as big and impressive as Berlin's, most of Budapest's trams are still modern, comfortable, efficient, yellow in livery, and cheap, although in my experience the good people of Budapest were less obsessively determined to keep their tram's tidy. On two separate occasions I got on to a tram to find that there was a slice of half-eaten pizza left on one of the plastic seats. I did enjoy having the trams pass right in front of the hotel though, which I'd experience again when I visited Amsterdam. 
Running both sides of the banks of the Danube, the trams seem to be a rather more picturesque, older style of tram. Which is actually perfectly in character with the rebuilt splendour of the castle, and the Chain Bridge, all partially destroyed during the carnage of the Second World War. If you look closely at the sketch on the left, you can see that the stops on this particular line benefit from some Art Nouveau iron work on the stop posts.
For a long time I didn't go back to make an acrylic painting of a tram, although there was no real reason why this couldn't have happened in the interim. In January of 2018 I started making some ink sketches of steam engines in pen and ink, and it was ruing this period that I made this sketch of a Mumbles tram alongside an old double decker bus. I love the subject matter of this sketch, but another thing that I really like about it is that it's a greatexample of the sort of sketch that I make just for pleasure and leisure while sitting on the sofa, watching the telly with half an eye. I'll be honest, I can't for the life of me remember exactly what I was watching at the same time, but then judging by the fact that this is one of my better sketches chances are that I was paying a lot more attention to the sketch than I was paying to the television.
In March 2018 I did set myself the challenge, on my sister blog South Wales Urban Sketcher - there's a link on the right if you want to check it out. The challenge was, er, is, to make a new sketch every day for a whole year. I started at the end of March. By the start of June I knew that it was inevitable that on at least one day I was going to return to my old friends, the Swansea tram, and this was it. As an ink sketch - I like it. I think it's quite effective and I particularly like the people getting into the front of the tram. In all honesty though, the front of the tram, the profile is a bit too wide to be a very faithful rendering of a Swansea double decker tram, more's the pity.
Come August 2018, and I was visiting the Spanish capital, Madrid. I was a little bit sad to see that
although it has a light railway, which links with its excellent metro network, Madrid does not actually have any tram network. Now, part of my trip was taking a train across country to Alicante to visit my in-laws. While I was there I took a day trip on the train into Alicante itself. What should I notice in the Alacant Terminal station, but a sign directing me to the trams. Well, I'm not a man to turn my nose up at such a thing. All the times I had previously visited Alicante I'd never noticed this before. However I took care to rectify this, and caught a tram in the underground section n the centre of Alicante, where I made this sketch in Mercado station. I did a few years later take the tram a;l the way to Benidorm. It was a lovely trip, a lot of it passing right by the coast, and has to rank as one of the most picturesque journeys I've ever taken on a tram.
Still, they are a pretty phlegmatic bunch, the Asmterdammers. It's not totally impossible that they thought it was a perfectly normal thing. Amsterdammers love their trams so much that they have a whole museum dedicated to their tramways. Sadly this was a fact that I didn't discover until after I'd left the city. Still, I can't blame them for that. The fact is that Amsterdam's reliance on trams seems to work out very well for them. They're just great. Say it quietly, but their blue and white livery reminds me of nothing so much as a lego train which I had many, many years ago.
In the summer of 2018 I made a day trip to the city of Murcia while I was staying with in laws near Alicante. I had the mortifying experience of discovering after I'd returned from Murcia, that Murcia has trams. Yes, you're quite right, I made sure not to repeat the mistake when I visited Alicante again in 2019. Rather like Stockholm, Murcia isn't overburdened with tram routes, but I had a very pleasant ride on this one, which went out from the centre of the city to the University and back. To be honest, so much do I enjoy trams that I thought the tram ride alone made it worthwhile going to Murcia.Generally, Spain isn't badly served for tram systems, having no fewer than 10, including heritage tramways but excluding specifically light railways.
My other trip in the summer of 2019 was to Malta. Malta is in many ways a wonderful destination, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. However, for all of its wonderful qualities, it doesn't have any metros and it doesn't have any tram lines. So
When it comes to trams, there was another way that Vienna earned my lasting affection. A fifteen minute walk away from my hotel, I discovered the Vienna Tram Museum. Every great museum tells
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During Autumn 2018 I've made a set of sketches of contemporary British trams. We've already mentioned Blackpool, who had the sense never to completely get rid of theirs. However, Manchester, B
irmingham-Wolverhampton, Sheffield, Nottingham, South London, and Edinburgh all have modern tramways in at least a part of their cities now. My idea is to eventually ride on each system, and to make sketches and pictures of each. The top picture is from the Manchester Metrolink. Of course, Blackpool never got rid of its trams, for which they should be praised to the skies. As it happens Glasgow was the last British city to actually get rid of its trams - sadly they haven't reinstated them yet. Mind you, with Edinburgh getting its own trams recently, maybe it's just
a matter of time. Still, Manchester was I think the first city in Britain to get a brand new tram system. The second is from the London Tramlink. This was actually originally called the Croydon Tramlink since it only runs in Croydon and associated areas in South London. When I'd made this sketch I made up my mind that I was actually going to produce sketches of all of the British city tramways. well, even including Blackpool there are still only 7 of them. It was not until the summer of 2021 that I actually came to ride on the London Tramlink, despite the fact that it goes as far as Wimbledon, and you can catch the tram just a five minute walk from my brother in law's house. Actually, I do have an ambition to take a trip around Britain for a week, and ride on each of Britain's tramways, light railways and underground railways. It's complicated by having to do Glasgow's Subway, Edinburgh's trams and London's trams, Underground a Docklands Light Railway, but I'm pretty sure you could do it all within a week. This is Nottingham's NET 
(Nottingham Express Transit) and to me it looks really appealing. I love trams anyway, but there's nothing that sets them off better than seeing them snaking their way past some monumental civic architecture like this.When I started making these tram sketches I had never ridden on a tram in the UK. When you think that I live in Port Talbot, then you'll see that the nearest city with trams to my home is Birmingham, and even that's a good 2 and a half hours away by car. With the best will in the world, I find it difficult to justify that length of trip just for tram riding. Still, it does mean that whenever I feel like I'm within a reasonable distance from a tram city for another purpose, then I'll try to go out of my way to add a tram ride to the trip. So, in the second week of August of 2020, I made a long promised trip to Crich, in Derbyshire to visit the National tramways museum. I enjoyed it a lot too. As I was preparing to leave in the mid afternoon, it occurred to me that Nottingham couldn't be all that far away. Indeed it wasn't, I was parked in the city centre within a half hour. So it was that I took a brief trip for a couple of stops from the Royal Centre tram stop. I would have liked to have gone further, but during the first year of the coronavirus, even with my mask on this probably wouldn't have been the best idea that I've ever had.
I made the Manchester and London tram sketches on a Saturday and Sunday, and didn't really get to make this sketch until the following Thursday. However that seemed to be the spur that put me into overdrive, since I made the following 4 sketches in the space of 2 days, the Friday and Saturday. The route of the Edinburgh Trams , as shown in this next sketch, seems particularly picturesque -well, as you know if you've ever visited it, Edinburgh is that sort of city. I'm sorry to say that I never visited Edinburgh until the summer of 2021. My father's father was from Scotland - Dundee as it happens - and I've wanted to visit a lot of places in Scotland for a long time now. The tram pictured is making the almost right angled term from the end of the line in York Place to the first stop - St. Andrew's. There is only the one line, but it makes itself extremely useful by going all the way out to Edinburgh airport. When I visited in 2021 you could see where work was being carried out extending the line, which should eventually reach as far as Leith.
The next sketch is of the Sheffield Super Tram. Like Edinburgh I have been to Sheffield. Only
I should apologise for singling out Birmingham, for the west Midlands Metro actually links the cities of Birmingham AND Wolverhampton. There's some terrific videos of the opening of the West Midlands Metro on YouTube if you're interested. (If you've come this far on this particular page, then it's not unreasonable to think that you might be.)Now, I have visited Birmingham on several occasions. Most of these were before the opening of the Metro though, and at other times I was with a group of guys, and we were in a car, and any 'can I have a ride on a tram please? - requests would have at best fallen upon deaf ears. Then I found out that I had
I made these sketches, then it occurred to me that while I've painted Blackpool trams, I've never made an ink sketch of one. So in the interests of completing the set I made this sketch of a modern Blackpool tram. And that completes the set of 7. Then I had a thought. If I also sketched the 2 light railways and three underground railways of Britain, that would add up to 12. Enough for a calendar! So that's exactly what I did in the three or four days following making this sketch. However, since they are trains and not trams, you'll have to look at my train page to see them.
This next sketch shows the Manx Electric Railway on the Isle of Man, and it illustrates one of the problems you can have when you start off making a series of pictures. You see, as far as I'm concerned, this is a tramway. Wikipedia - which admittedly is not always the fount of human wisdom - calls it a tramway. Yet Wikipedia does not include it within its own list of British tramways and light railways. Why on Earth not? The only answer that I can come up with is that it's not on the mainland. That's not really a good enough reason. The other reason I can think of is that this isn't really a metro system in the way that most of the others are. Yes, Blackpool runs heritage trams along the front, but through the town it uses modern 'flexity' trams. Well, there we are. If you want to consider the Manx Electric Railway in another category, fair enough. Call it what you like, it's a lovely thing all round.
Including the Manx Electric Railway, though, opens the gate to a couple of others. One of which has a good claim to being Wales' only working tramway, the Great Orme Tramway. This runs from the station in Llandudno to the top of the Great Orme. Is it a tramway? Well, it certainly calls itself one. It runs through streets too. Now, it isn't electrically like the others on the page. It's a cable system, and the cars are actually attached to the cables rather than being able to detach and attach like the world famous San Francisco system. Well, what the hell. The British Tramways Online website - which is the most authoritative source I know - says it's a tramway, and that's good enough for me.
In 2018 I started making some watercolours in monochrome, that is, trying to use just shades of the one colour, and I have to be honest, I was pretty pleased with the
results I got. In this next one I returned to my old faithful subject, the Swansea Bay trams of yesteryear. This was based on a photograph showing what I believe to be one of the trams on its last legs since it seems in a bit of a state, it's on an overgrown bit of track, and there seem to be kids hanging out of the windows on top. The aim with this picture was to try to make it reminiscent of an old sepia tone photograph. I don't think I came close to achieving that, but I'm still pretty pleased with the way that it turned out.
Sepia - Mumbles Tram - SOLD
This painting was made on proper watercolour paper. The next time that I decided to try to make another 'sepia' tone monochrome tram painting is
this one. The subject is the Kingsway Tram Tunnel in London, which saw the last tram running through it in 1952. I'll be honest, I just took a page from a very cheap and cheerful sketchbook and worked with what I had, and it is true that you do get what you pay for. I didn't find it quite as easy to work with, and I didn't feel that the results were quite as effective. But what do I know? You see what you think. In the Mumbles picture I really like the effect of the sun on the upper deck windows, while this is obviously in a tunnel so there's no opportunity for it. Generally I don't think it's quite as subtle, although I do like the work I've done on the two posters on the tunnel wall on the right hand side.
In October 2018 I did start working on another
acrylic painting. This shows a London tram in Islington, on Highgate Hill. It's a larger 16x20in canvas, and although it's not quite finished (it needs work on the figures on the bottom right, and a few other finishing touches) I think that there's enough there for you to see hopefully that I've got a reasonable claim to have improved since making my first tram acrylic of the Blackpool tram, which I've included again underneath for comparison, since the two trams are in almost the same position in the pictures. In fairness to myself, I'd only been painting for a matter of weeks when I made the Blackpool painting - AND - someone liked it enough to buy it, which was very encouraging. Maybe a factor is that the Blackpool painting was made on a smaller canvas, 16 x 10. I'd like to think, though, that being two or three years down the line, I could make a better painting of a balloon tram. Now, there's an idea to conjure with . . . Watch this space.
This painting was made on proper watercolour paper. The next time that I decided to try to make another 'sepia' tone monochrome tram painting is
In October 2018 I did start working on another
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| London Tram on Hughgate Hill - SOLD |
acrylic painting. This shows a London tram in Islington, on Highgate Hill. It's a larger 16x20in canvas, and although it's not quite finished (it needs work on the figures on the bottom right, and a few other finishing touches) I think that there's enough there for you to see hopefully that I've got a reasonable claim to have improved since making my first tram acrylic of the Blackpool tram, which I've included again underneath for comparison, since the two trams are in almost the same position in the pictures. In fairness to myself, I'd only been painting for a matter of weeks when I made the Blackpool painting - AND - someone liked it enough to buy it, which was very encouraging. Maybe a factor is that the Blackpool painting was made on a smaller canvas, 16 x 10. I'd like to think, though, that being two or three years down the line, I could make a better painting of a balloon tram. Now, there's an idea to conjure with . . . Watch this space.So, we're almost up to date now . However, I'm probably a bit of a hopeless case where trams are concerned. Case in point, I didn't want to start sketching out another canvas on the morning that I wrote this. but on the same hand, I didn't want to let the day pass without sketching something. So I made this quick pen and ink impression based on a photograph of a couple of trams in London.
At the start of 2019, I began to overhaul my line and wash 'technique'. I just haven't got it previously. For once I achieved some half decent results in a couple of sketches of Porthcawl. So I made sketches of some of the trams I've used in Europe. Not urban sketches since these were all based on photos, but using urban sketching techniques, certainly. Here they are: -
I had a bit of success in September 2020, when I sold two of my acrylic tram paintings - London Tram on Highgate Hill and vintage Lisbon tram. Bearing in mind the success I've had painting Glasgow trams, I decided to chance my arm again, although in the first place, I'd make an ink and watercolour painting, in a similar style to the European tram pictures immediately above this paragraph.
Then, for an encore, I found this rather lovely photograph of an American streetcar in Chicago from the mid 50s, and that's how this sketch all came about.
At the start of 2019, I began to overhaul my line and wash 'technique'. I just haven't got it previously. For once I achieved some half decent results in a couple of sketches of Porthcawl. So I made sketches of some of the trams I've used in Europe. Not urban sketches since these were all based on photos, but using urban sketching techniques, certainly. Here they are: -
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| Budapest tram on the banks of the Danube SOLD |
Prague Tram near the Old Town - first attempt
Prague Tram near the old town - second attempt
SOLD
Amsterdam tram near Centraal Station 1
Amsterdam Tram near Centraal Station 2
SOLD
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| Glasgow Tram A4 ink and watercolour - SOLD |
It was not quite as succesful as I'd hoped, but only because I used sketchbook paper, which doesn't take water well - it's too light. You see I originally planed just to make an ink sketch, but then decided to add watercolour afterwards. Live and learn -more careful planning and preparation required. Oh, it still sold, though.
So, I'd been having quite a bit of success with selling my back catalogue of larger acrylic paintings, so I decided it might be a good idea to paint another. It had been a long time since I made a large original acrylic painting like this, so, working on the principle of 'give the people what they want' - I painted this Glasgow tram. It's a bit of a return to what I was doing 3 years ago. But then if you like a subject, where's the problem. I think if you compare this latest painting: -
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| Glasgow Tram Acrylic 16x20 |
I think you can see a change. Now, okay, let's admit that both of these earlier canvases were smaller, 12x16. Allowing for that, though, I think you can see that I've become rather more confident i my use of colour. Compare the buildings. Even though I deliberately used a base colour which was heavily diluted, it's still far bolder than the earlier pictures. Going off the point a little, I do wonder whether the new painting is a view of the same street as the bottom one, with the old feller with the cap - just a little closer to the tree line.
I didn't return to Glasgow until 2022. After I completed the Direct Watercolour Challenge in June I really fancied having a go at another Glasgow tram. I didn't use a black and white photo for reference this time, which maybe was a mistake, but went for a colour photograph. This is what I ended up with.
I don't feel that it's quite as successful as the two Mumbles tram pictures made a few days earlier. I think the right hand side of the the painting jars with the left, even though I have been as faithful to the original picture as I can be. Nonetheless, if you compare it to my earlier Glasgow tram watercolours, I think you'll see an improvement. If we look at the most similar view I've painted before: - 
I hope that you can see what I mean. The detailing on the tram in the earlier picture is a little more precise, probably because I used ink for the outlines. But the colours are all washed out, and even though there is a lot more brown than actual grey in this picture, grey is how it appears.
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This next picture is one of my continuing efforts to develop a looser painting style.
London Tram
SOLD
Hence the mingling of colours, the going over the lines, the liberal splatterings and the exaggerated perspective. I was quite pleased with this when I made it.
The next painting on the page here is not a tram. Yes, I do know that a trolleybus isn't a tram, but what the hell. On London's streets the trolleybuses inherited the proud traditions of the trams, even if they only lasted for about 30 years. This is a 607 trolleybus in my home town, Ealing in West London. The trollies were all taken away three or four years before I was born, sadly. They must have been quite a sight.
My great great grandparents were the first generation of my family to move to Ealing in about 1907. I'd like to think that they would have used the new electric trams at one time or another. The trolleybus above was the first in a little series of Ealing public transport of years gone by. The second was a type B motorbus, the third was an AEC Routemaster double decker, and this next was the fourth, a pair of London United Tramways trams in Ealing Broadway.
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| 607 Trolleybus just past Ealing Town Hall |
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| Trams in Ealing Broadway |
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| Warsaw 2022 |
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| London Tramlink Devonald Road 2021 |
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| Benidorm-Alicante tram 2022 |
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| Warsaw 2022 |
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| Warsaw 2022 |
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| Riga 2023 |
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| Kingsway Tram Tunnel London |
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| Lisbon Tram |
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| Bucharest Tram |
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| Mumbles Tram Blackpill Station |
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