pumpkinstrokemarrow

After something of an interval, back with this river scene from Falcon, made in Hatfield in Hertfordshire. Photograph from Vic Guy - an outfit which for once for an outfit on a jigsaw box, I can actually find on the internet. See http://www.vkguy.co.uk.

Quite a dear outfit, with the price for a slight variation on this very scene being around £40 for a 24 by 18 inch print. Easy enough to find by using key words in their advanced search facility. Some lucky soul must have spent many hours keywords this extensive image library. It is suggested that for commercial applications, such as jigsaws, I need to get in touch for a custom price.

I then see that the picture is of Worcester cathedral, a place which I have never visited and which I had not realized looked more like a large parish church than the home of a bishop, despite being a great favorite with Good King Joihn. But armed with this information I find that I can buy this actual scene for the same price as the variation. Catalog number 017758-19. Just to be sure that all is well I put the catalog number to Mr. Google who comes straight back with Worcester Cathedral from one V. K. Guy. Clever stuff!

But oddly, he can only offer 4 images from Surrey, two of which are a grotto at Virginia Water. But I suppose for an outfit based up in the lakes of the far north one should not really expect more.

A pleasing, gentle puzzle; good for winding down, Doing a few pieces here and there. Very regular with four pieces meeting at nearly all, if not all, interior vertices. Only a sprinkling of exotically shaped pieces. With the expanse of water made easy by strong colour and pattern coding. No problem knowing which way round a piece should be. And with the sky made easy by not being very big and being broken up with a lot of well defined cloud.

Started with the edge, which I completed, albeit rightly nervous about errors in the top edge. Then the skyline, then the boat line. Not able to complete this last and had to turn up into the cathedral to anchor it, not reaching the right hand edge until some time later.

Buildings easy. Then start pushing out from the boat line.

Steps easy. Then thought to do the flower-water line but ended up just doing the flowers. The line was not well enough defined to be helpful. Now left with two islands of water, two islands of trees and two islands of sky, knocking them off in that order. Slowed down towards the end by the need to fix some errors in the top edge.

Interesting how the water turned out in this photograph; the strong texture struck me as being more like that of a painting. Maybe someone has written about how such images get generated from mobile surfaces. Is it some arcane mathematical consequence of capturing a fixed planar image of something exhibiting both reflective and prismatic features moving around in three dimensions?