Friday 20 April 2012

The Art of Urban Sketching: Spot the Blunder...


Late yesterday afternoon, as the rain hammered down on the studio veluxes and the world seemed a rather dreary place, I received an email from sunnier climes that made me laugh out loud... 


Anyone remember earlier this year, I told you about a book called The Art of Urban Sketching which I'm really proud to have my work in? Well, Alessandro Melillo in Italy was just reading through the copy he'd just bought, when his gaze snagged on one of the images featured on my page, a pencil drawing I did of an old, public swimming bath, not far from where I live:


It's known locally as Heeley Baths. It's still in use and housed in its original building (love the segregated entrances: Victorian prudishness captured in stone). I took care with the carved, stone lettering on the facade, or thought I did...


Spotted it yet..?

Pubic Baths! Great eh? I did the drawing 18 months ago and it's been posted here, on my Flickr site, and on Urban Sketchersas well as in the book of course, but nobody's ever noticed before, including me!

It's rather ironic, isn't it, that it took an Italian speaker to spot an error in my English?

14 comments:

my sisters and me said...

oops! thats funny!!!

Carol said...

...and now it jumps right out at us! You are a good sport. Always love your inspiring work Lynne!

Caroline B said...

Talk about your Freudian slip!

Sarah McCormick said...

I didn't notice until you pointed it out, either. That is so hilarious!! Oops... I think our minds are trained to fill in the blanks automatically as we read. So it makes sense that a non-native English speaker would see it - he is looking at the words more consciously than we are.

Lynne the Pencil said...

Aha - good thinking Sarah!

Donna Jeanne Koepp said...

As someone who uses words in my art, it is soooooo easy to do. This is especially funny though and forever captured in print. Love the drawing by the way too!!

Prathmesh said...

Love all sketches! :)

Capt Elaine Magliacane said...

Is this where I admit that it took me a while to figure it out... I kept wanting Swimming to have too many m's or not enough... only after I was convinced swimming was ok, I thought maybe baths was incorrect, the British sometimes add u's and e's that us Americans don't use... and then I saw it... OMG too funny... and I for one would never have noticed, without help..

Unknown said...

ha ha ha.

It's still a great drawing :)

Unknown said...

It would be a good thing to wash those. Besides even spell checker wouldn't have caught a mistake like that, no harm no foul.

Alessandro Melillo said...

And it was fun spotting it...!
I'm actually myself a sort of typo-hound and I often find myself reading errors way before even knowing what the page is dealing with!
Oh, and I'm a sketcher as well, though I never put online mine. This might be the reason why I dive into details ;-)
"Pubic Baths"... maybe a bidet spa!
Have fun, folks! :-)

Lynne the Pencil said...

LOL!I love the idea of a spa featuring rows of bidets: perfect for those extra soft and shiny pubes... Thanks for all the smiles A x

Joanna Dover said...

Too funny!!

jabbott said...

Thats well funny!