I wrote in my last post of the way that I feel sketching has helped me recover from a bout of clinical depression. I’ve been urban sketching for about a year now, and I’d already made quite a few sketches of places in Port Talbot. As I recovered, it struck me that all my sketches had focused on what I think could be fairly described as ‘nice old buildings’. Nothing wrong with that, either. Since returning from Prague, though, I’ve been trying to widen my repertoire, and show other sides of the town. Warts and all was a phrase that I used in a previous post, and I think it’s a pretty good way of describing my attitude now. Basically, if it tells any kind of story about the town as it is now, then it’s a worthwhile subject. A couple of days ago I was idly looking back through the sketchbooks I’ve filled, and on a whim I began counting how many sketches of Port Talbot I’ve made. It turned out that I’ve reached fifty. I felt unaccountably pleased with myself, and then I began to think. It’s pointless to think that you can tell the whole story of a town even just concentrating on the here and now in sketches. It’s a never ending task. Still, the fact is that I feel that I’ve only really just about started. There are so many more things, more aspects of the town that I want to sketch. With this in mind, then, I have set myself a challenge. Over the next weeks and months, I want to make another 50 sketches of the town, with the aim of answering the question – What is Port Talbot? – in 100 sketches. I have this idea of making 99 by the middle of December, and then using my last sketch to show the Christmas decorations, or maybe Santa’s grotto in the shopping centre. Will it happen? Well, I’m halfway there already. The picture shows sketch number 50 – the disused Cynonville Station platforms, which have become part of a cycleway at Afan Argoed Country Park.