The Blackberries are ready

I love Blackberries and ever since I can remember I have collected them. They grow in all the hedgerows in the village and are now ready for picking. I love Blackberry pie, or apple and Blackberry pie, or just Blackberries and custard, or Blackberries and icecream. You get the picture , definately high on my favourite list of tasty things to eat. My drawing is in watercolour paints.

edm 90 challenge "Something with Wings"

Last Saturday I went to watch a wedding at the village church. As I walked along the road I saw this moth on the ground, hit by a car maybe, perfect but no longer alive. I wrapped it in tissue and put it in my bag. It is a Magpie Moth, delicate and with the most beautiful markings. The bride looked stunning in her fabulous dress. My Moth surely had her finest hour with her amazing wings.
My drawing is in black ink pen and derwent crayons for the orange and yellowy makings.

Seahorse

This picture will enlarge if you click on it.

I love seahorses and am always fascinated by them. I have two specimens, both bought on holiday at Malta. I love drawing them , love the shape and patterns. I know they are even more beautiful when they are alive and swimming in the sea, although I have only seen them once at a sea world. My drawing is in pencil.

Poppy Seedhead

I was doing a bit of gardening yesterday and picked some poppy seed heads to draw. I like leaving some until autumn and they become more and more interesting. I collect them at all different states of decay. I really like them when they turn into skeleton, bird cage sort of shapes, with their delicate structure showing. This one is solid and chunky , rather sculptural . It is drawn in pencil.

edm 130 School Supplies

Well I used to teach infants and everyday I had this job. I always sharpened all the pencils in the pencil pots, especially if it was handwriting . I had classes of 30 children , if I only did it once a day over one week that was 150 pencils, so over the year ..imagine. Sometimes I would hate it , a blunt sharpener and it took for ever. So I thought this had to be the challenge, a pencil sharpener , shavings and a nice sharp pencil. Not my usual drawing subject but took the challenge, in pencil.

EDM 112 "Draw Something Fresh"

I live by the seashore and in the summer months Mushrooms grow on the shore. As a child I would get such a thrill at going down to the shore and searching for the mushrooms. It is best to go after rain and then sunshine , the little white button mushrooms are growing and peeping through the grass. It doesn't matter how many times you have been searching for them it is always such a thrill to find them. Last year waS a bumper year and there were masses of them. Your going to laugh when I tell you that I don't actually like eating them. But I do like drawing them. This one was picked fresh from the shore and selected for its beautiful shape and lovely patterns with the frilly scales underneath . I just love them as a drawing subject. Of course as they perish fairly quickly I needed to draw it while it was fresh, to capture all the detail. It is drawn wiith HB pencil.

EDM 31 "Draw Something You Collect"

Well this one was easy for me , it had to be a leaf. I collect them nearly everyday, I definately look at them everyday . Yesterday I went for a walk by Coniston Lake and I collected some tiny leaves. They are beautifully shaped with colours which really are more like at Autumn time. We are having so much rain I fear autumn will arrive early.These little leaves had been blown about and had turned yellow and browns and just a bit of green here and there. I also found bits of blue and white china , going to draw them together for a picture.
Back to the leaf , Challenge EDM 31, as this is what I collect. This ia actually a Dock Leaf that has been eaten by beetles and left this gorgeous lace effect. I have used a new product by Derwent called Graphitint, like a pencil with colors. I really like them, used green and brown here. Love drawing the detail.
I have my eye on a Dock plant along the roadside, it is changing into some lovely colours and also been eaten by the beetles, great shapes appearing.
Hope you like this one. You should be able to click and get a larger image as some of you wanted to view my work closer.

My Dragonfly at My Exhibition.

My Exhibition is open and it is so wonderful to see my drawings in the beautiful gallery at Brantwood. I do feel so proud to have achieved this and I hope that all the people that visit the exhibition enjoy seeing my art work. It is such a wonderful setting on the edge of Coniston Lake in the Lake District. Brantwood is the former home of John Ruskin , follow my link to Brantwood to see this lovely place.
In the gallery there are two display cabinets and I have filled them with lots of my collections of natural finds...shells, seeds , insects and feathers. I have also displayed lots of my drawings, sketch book pages and art materials . This is, for me, an important part of the exhibition and shows actual objects that are in in my drawings. Everyone seems to love the cabinets, with all the interesting little specimens, such as the dragonfly which I found last year in the roadside . It had been hit by a car and was injured, it died shortly afterwards but I kept it in a jar and did some drawings of it.
My exhibition is on for five weeks , so if anyone comes to the English Lake District and to Coniston you can see it at Brantwood in the Severn Studio. It is called "Drawings from Nature". The Large Dragonfly drawing is displayed over the fireplace, this is the original drawing , which I use as my logo for everything. It is on the Posters for my Exhibition. So follow the Dragonfly. It is drawn using coloured inks, with both paint brushes and ink pens. This dragonfly was found in a court yard in Malta, where I made detailed sketches and then later made this large drawings . This is one of my set of art cards ,on my website.

Go for a Nature Walk EDM63 Draw what you find

This is what I do on a regular basis.As I live in the countryside everyday is a nature walk. I notice things as I'm walking ,and if I like the shape of something it more often than not finds its way home with me to draw.I noticed this delicate piece of fern ,as it is drying out and turning brown, it curls around. It is drawn in pencil. I like the shape, it is elegant and delicate, which is what I liked when I first saw it.