Nearly time to down tools for another year, and I haven’t posted a blog for a while. So here is this years Christmas card design to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Back to regular posts in the new year hopefully. Be nice to each other and keep safe.
This is Bude, where I live and is the place I love, well it is not exactly Bude, it is an amalgamation of Bude. I have spent the last week or so working on this design, gathering all the ideas of what to put in and what to leave out. Unusually for me this is half digital, I drew everything out in black and white, chose a few areas to be solid black and then added the colour digitally so that I could play about with it until I had what I wanted.
The last one today is the owl from the mouse story, it is one of my favourites. This has been an interesting project, it has helped me to hear peoples thoughts. Thank you for all the support, the likes and the shares and thank you to Lisa White at Art Mash for the idea. Another series of paintings is being planned but it will be a few days.
Almost at the end. Today’s picture is of a Kingfisher, a beautiful fast little bird. I have heard their ‘peep peep’ call in the reeds often but only seen one twice.
Today’s painting started off as a doodle, some do. This one I called ‘Fog of War’.
Hellebore. One of the earliest flowers to bloom each year, they are often called the Christmas or Lenten Rose.
Just along the coast, Tintagel Castle, legendary birthplace of King Arthur. The castle is built on a rugged, windswept ‘almost’ island on the North Cornwall shore. It is a wonderful place to visit for the day if you love to scramble down hillsides and clamber up stone steps and can imagine being there 1500 years ago. It has it’s own beach with a waterfall and a huge cave (Merlins Cave) that floods at high tide. It is also really good to paint, as I have, several times.
Todays painting is a watercolour from my story about a lost mouse, all his adventures as he tries to find his way home, based around my home in Cornwall.
This is a little line and wash landscape using watercolour and ink. I find line and wash enjoyable as the picture comes together quickly, where as usually each piece will take days, the hardest part is to resist the inclination to put in to much detail.
This little bunch of snowdrops delights me every year when at appears in the hedgerow opposite my front gate, so a couple of February’s ago I thought it was time that I painted them.
Worm Illustration 