There’s an annual festival held in the town across the river from here – the Carluke Jam and Ham Festival which celebrates Carluke’s history, musical traditions and food manufacturing within the town. This is its 10th year Anniversary and a great nudge for me to draw some of the townscape.

There will be an open art exhibition held in the ONESpace Community Hub at 76 High Street, Carluke from Friday 15th September to Sat 30th September 2023.

I’ve drawn ten different views of the townscape, all small drawings on paper no more than 15x15cm. All ten original sketches will be framed and for sale although there is a limit to three which will go up in the exhibition.

These are the first six sketches; the rest will follow in the next post.

Those walkers and map readers who might have stumbled onto this page may know about Major-General William Roy – and his masterpiece ‘Roy’s Map of Scotland’ – well he was born in Carluke, in 1726. It was thanks to his ground breaking work that we now have the Ordnance Survey maps today.

Roy probably used a quill for drawing his maps – metal dip pen nibs came into wider circulation in the 1820s. I still love using mapping pens for drawing!

Thanks for reading,

Ronnie 🙂