Newbiggin
Project Background
The nice thing about making maps is that they tell the story of a particular place at a particular point in time. This lady had very fond memories of growing up with her cousins in Newbiggin and she asked me to recreate some of those memories in map form.
I spent an enjoyable, sunny afternoon at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea on the Northumberland coast. It’s an old-fashioned seaside town which has in recent years been making a comeback. It has a fantastic new Maritime Centre, yet the old places she remembers from her childhood have changed very little.
I took loads of terrible photos, then made a very rough thumbnail drawing, which I then inked over once it had been approved…
There are many interesting features of Newbiggin including….
The family home
The bandstand and Bertorelli’s
St. Bartholomew’s Church
An anchor theme for the compass
The client and her cousins would be on the beach, and there was the small matter of the family corgi who caught the double-decker bus to Newcastle one day, from outside the Cresswell Arms!
So here’s the finished painting…
The family were very happy and as they live local to me I was able to hand over the original in person. When I arrived I was given a beautiful hand-stitched applique thank you card which I hadn’t expected! Prints have been sent around the globe, from Lincolnshire to Alabama USA and I was happy to spread the word about the many delights of Newbiggin.