Today is New Years Eve, so Liz and myself took the day off and went walking along the Wey Navigation river/canal. A bit boggy, cool, misty and beautiful. The dried thistles and grasses looked wonderful; photographed some teasels, you can see them below this image.

The above drawing is of the Hoe valley and was done in short spurts over the Christmas period.

The teasels were a straight black and white photograph with a yellow filter, to darken the otherwise rather light sky.


Shortly Liz and myself are off on owr travels, I will keep you posted.

Its right in the middle of the Christmas festival, the day after Boxing Day. Yesterday we walked all the food off along the North Downs way, passing this amazing tree on-route. The air was a tad nippy, with lovely soft sunlight and under-foot the ground was easy to walk on if bit boggy, but  lovely. 

A friend from up north is staying with us for a few days, so with her,  food , festivities, church and everything else, yesterday and the season has been one of those rather special periods time.

Ink work is continuing over the period, maybe that will appear here in a few days.

Woods of the Guildford Road, just outside Woking, an experimental piece, drawn a couple of weeks ago.

It was drawn on the whole, without the use of tradition draughtsmen's lineage, but rather with the use of various marks, scratches, squiggles and other abstract marks. These marks were layered upon each other to finally form a representative image. The end result was a rather strange and pleasant phantomish effect. I must pursue this further. 

There are three reasons for placing this photo on my blog today.

1 It was on a door in the centre of Tenby and we are going there in a couple of weeks.

2 It is about time I posted another photo on my blog.

and 3 simply to show that there is beauty, colour and loveliness all around us, often in the simple everyday objects. We are all guilty of walking around with our eyes shut.

Camos street near the British Museum, one of my recent London sketches.

Ordinary life is also still with me as the hall decorating was still with me and thankfully it was finished today, so now back to the real painting in life.

This was finished yesterday, it is an old yew tree, near Windsor. Drawing the ground, grasses, leaves, shadows and various contrasts was slightly challenging. Often with a painting one of the skills is knowing when to stop, however with ink, with contrast being one of the basics, the discipline often is to have courage not to stop, but rather to continue deepening the blacks, in this image, that was very tricky. Until some of the blacks were made very BLACK, the work just looked a bit weak and insipid, so I carried on; he presto it worked. 

We were walking on Chobam Common a few days ago, it was very windy and we were caught out in the pouring rain. However this fallen birch tree really caught our eyes. The hardest section to draw was the grass; must draw more pictures with lots of grass in them, that's how you learn!

Tonight we are going to Wisely RHS gardens, they have a evening lightened walk during the run up to Christmas, a bit like tasteful Blackpool illuminations. Lets see what I bring back from there.

The round of Christmas events has well and truly started now, this afternoon was an old folks afternoon tea event with the Salvation Army, then tomorrow there is a Mind event. I love the festival and my art certainly goes on.

This week the concentration has been on still life, mixed media apples in particular (you might see that in a few days time), with the ink work being fit in between.

For TV fans this week is a picture of Doc. Martin's surgery  in St. Isaacs, Cornwall. we had a super few days there last year; however when visiting  this little port the rain just fell by the bucket full, a quick sketch under an awning was just about all that was possible. I worked this up a few days later.

Christmas is fast approaching, so how about a sketch of  the lovely open space in Prague dedicated to their old King and called Wenceslas Square. It was a few years ago, January and bitterly cold. A super small central hotel, an equally small bar next door for a noggin last thing each evening, with everybody being so friendly,  as folk normally are with artists;  then with just four days to paint and take photographs, down to work.

A super few days and a nice body of work.

My principal medium as you know is ink. However ink is an excitingly diverse tool. Coming in many presented forms, from enclosed to dip pens, brushes, aerosol, wet in wet; the diversity of this tool is almost endless.

The painting below is a mixture of dip Indian ink with brush/pen applied coloured ink, wet in wet; great fun, even if a tad tricky to control. Using ink on a wet surface or wetting an ink drawing (under control) open the medium up to producing amazing effects. More of those at another date.

Well to day has been rather pleasant; traveling into London with the aim of spending the day sketching. Working above Oxford street, behind Lewis's and around the BT tower. Several lovely people came up to me inquisitively to see what I was up to. Lots of encouragement, and three sketches later I meandered my way home. The sketch of the BT tower was a little iffy, maybe it was partly because my collapsible stool, collapsed whilst I was sitting on it, but he ones of All Souls Langan Place, (he above image) and another of where Carlisle street joins Soho square were not to bad.
All in all a good day.

One of my arty loves is sketching and traveling. As a result when on a journey my aim normally is to produce two sketches and a photograph of each place visited. This over the years has resulted in many thousands of sketches from all over the place.

I have made several painting trips to the Scottish highlands and islands. The image above is of the Sound of Mull, looking from the village on Iona, northeast towards Mull. It was drawn with a cheap black biro pen, quite early in the morning in  May, some years ago.

Adventures, learning. blogging; its all a nightmare! My internet has been down for about a week, hence no posting.

Todays post is of one of a group of trees in Hanger Woods in Surrey, a part of the North Downs way near Guildford. This afternoon we are of to some woods near Chobham to stroll, research, have a little exercise; so lets see what comes from this afternoons jaunt.

A busy week, two commissions finished, went to see the Tales of Hoffman the other night and seeing the Bolshoi (Sleeping Beauty) next week. Life is great.

Well I did say that this blog was a learning curve; when I posted a picture the other day I somehow managed to delete everything else, never mind. Lets try again.

I've just had a lovely weekend, a trip to the ballet, meal with friends, church and lots of painting. I feel refreshed and ready for tomorrow, when I will be leading two groups.

The drawing above is of a path by Hangar Lane, near Newlands Corner in Surrey.

At the moment I am allowing myself a brief rest from trees and looking at nature from three directions. So an object is selected and then painted three times from different angles, its good fun. Media being used is a mixture of water-colour and ink; this produces lovely bright images as can be seen below.

This week has been a little busy. I had an exhibition in Fordingbridge (New Forest) and that had to be taken down on Tuesday. It was at the Augustus John gallery/pub and received very favourable feed back and as a consequence have been invited me back again next November for a month; however more of that nearer the time.

Also had the feed back from Epsom Mental Health Week, where I work as their residential artist. They liked me and want me again next October and have also invited me to have an art  display during the conference, so not a bad week.

But not to long of the tree work.