After ten years living in southern France, I find myself back in Saddleworth where I grew up. The change from an artistic point of view is quite drastic. The light and colours, the landscape and architecture are all different. The bright light and warm tones of the south have given way to cooler greens, greys and browns. The familiar terracotta roof tiles, colourful shutters and red earth of my French sketches are being replaced by dark stone buildings and green... so much green all around.
Saddleworth is a rural community located in the old West Riding of Yorkshire, although, confusingly, it is actually administered by Oldham, which is in Lancashire, or is it Greater Manchester...? No one really knows. The architecture, however, is quintessentially Yorkshire. The traditional houses are three-storey weaver's cottages built of millstone grit, which is a light sandy colour when first cut, darkening to greyish black over time. The most distinctive feature of these houses is the mullioned windows - rows of narrow panes separated by stone pillars - which, I discovered, are a pain to draw!
To start off my new blog, here's a sketch of our new home in Diggle - a cottage occupying part of a stone farmhouse on the side of Lark Hill.
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