This is a sketchy watercolour painting of a sunflower with some details added in ink. I’m trying some different combinations of watercolour and ink.
Sunflower in ink and watercolour
painting
Squirrel practice in pencil and watercolour
A page from my watercolour sketchbook featuring assorted red and grey squirrels. Below that are some of the pencil sketches I did first. These pages have led to a running joke about my “squirrels per day” count.
Goldfinch Sketch in Watercolour pencils
A little family of 5 goldfinches were feeding and exploring outside my window this morning. They were rummaging around in some rough ground, one was outside my window playing peek-a-boo. They’re small birds but you can see they have a lot of attitude. They wandered around for a few minutes then as a group they just walked off round the corner. I managed to get a photograph of one finch and drew a quick sketch with watercolour pencils.
Painting Apple Blossom with Lily
My dogs are usually nearby when I’m drawing or painting. I make a cuppa, they get some chews and we all settle down together. I have dog beds all around the desk so my feet are always cosy. Sally also pokes her way onto the seat behind me. And sometimes Lily gets on the desk. There is a lot of mischief at first – Lily likes to play with my stuff, flinging the odd pen or bit of paper. Then she’ll settle down for a snuggle and look out the window.
So here we have a work in progess shot with Lily “supervising”
And here’s the finished picture.
Happy little shelves
The walls round my desk are painted in a colour perfectly named “happy yellow”. I have some lovely shelves stained dark and covered in books, notebooks, many bottles of ink, paint and other goodies. They’re just above my computer so I rearrange things and change what’s on display to keep it interesting. Some things are there to make me smile, my supplies are close and lure me to play. There are books I want to read and a backlog of journals and notebooks remind me to write too.
Holmfirth
Another painting, this time it’s a rural landscape. I took a bit longer painting this one, just because I was sitting for several shorter sessions and not an afternoon of determined practice. But as I’m trying to loosen up, I’m going to push up the speed again. It’s really satisfying filling up my sketchbook with paintings and feeling my skills developing each day.
I’m also transferring my landscape practice into digital art too, to finish the background on a horse painting that has sat gathering virtual dust.
I will also be working on a series of cartoons, but more details on those once they’re in full production. Yes, I do tease, don’t I? mad grin
Rosa on the Grand Union Canal
My first attempt at painting a narrow boat. Given that I want to live on the canal at some point, I thought I should practice my boats! And water… Reflections are fun but challenging.
This is an A5 sized painting from my sketchbook. I took time to draw a few different composition sketches and really plan the painting out. This gave me a great opportunity to sketch the boat a few times before I had to transfer the outline to my sketch pad.
Farm scene with geese
It feels like years since I was scanning and posting pictures from my sketchbooks, so I hope this one makes up for my neglect!
It’s a small (A5) watercolour from my sketchbook. I’ve been working through some watercolour exercises to give myself a wee refresher course. I’m not usually a landscape painter, so it’s a chance for me to work right out of my comfort zone and see what happens.
The other thing I’ve been working on is my painting speed. That’s improving too, so I guess this means I’ll have no excuse for leaving it so long between posts in future!