VICTOR: Well I’ve done a few these (referring to the blast furnace) I must say… we did one in Wales which was a little bit like this one, so I’m familiar with these… we did another one by the Iron Bridge… there was iron production going on there which was similar, so I’m familiar with the machinery which may have gone into that, and there are one or two surviving ones which have actually got walls, so I know what the walls would have looked like…. They’re very troublesome things because they’re continuously constructing and expanding so they’re full of big cracks and things, they’re quite sort of beat-up looking things..

BOB: What will they do with your paintings when you have completed them?

VICTOR: Well they always get scanned. Sometimes they’re used in the process…. There’s a discussion going on about the building or something, and the film then comes to the drawing to explain what they’re talking about, or they’ll scan them and put them up as a static thing. Sometimes they film as I am drawing them.

I’m using water colors because they are quick. Criteria is that if you are doing something which is “maybe”….  For instance we did a church recently and it could have been a single aisle or double aisle or whatever, then it’s best to use pencil because you are continuously have to erase and redraw it or something like that. So I stick to pencil….

I mean in this case, we haven’t found this building yet, but they’re fairly standard so, if nothing else, it tells you what you are looking for…. What we hope to find.

BOB: It’s so detailed!

Yes the detail is important because, unless you get the figures against it, you don’t get a human scale--- it could be the size of a cathedral, this could be the size of a cottage or something…. And I like drawing figures and animals, there again, they just help to put the thing into context to show life going on around it instead of just the building.  People say to me that “We wait for the end, for when your drawing comes up, to see what it was all about.”