New paintings and regular art updates.
Did I once have a rocking horse ?
How fast did it go,
Over hills, over fields,
Up mountain paths,
Down into dales and vales.
If I had a rocking horse
Where did it live?
In stables or a farm yard
Or the back bedroom in our house.
What colour was that rocking horse
Was it a bay?
A white maned charger
A gentle, dappled grey?
I once had a rocking horse,
So long ago
I don’t remember anything-
Where did it go?
These are digital drawings from 2007 or 2008. I’m not sure what I was thinking of when I did them but the first couple look rather cheeky I think. The last one seems a bit smug….
I like using different coloured backgrounds to contrast with the drawings pen colours.
I didn’t remember them till they popped up on my Facebook feed a few days ago. I posted a lot of my drawings are there because the site was closing and I wanted to keep them safe.
My favourite is the pig with his curly tail. He seems a real character. I would love to illustrate George Orwells “Animal Farm” the drawing seems to go with the phrase two legs bad, four legs good, which may be a misquote …
Anyway I like the squiggled feel to it. I hope you do too….
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I have posted some more of my old drawings for you. As you can see I have lots of ideas, some of them come from photographs I have seen in magazines, others are from my imagination. I have a few more left, so I might post them later in the week.
I hadn’t seen the slideshow option before, hope you like it.
I do like dolphins, I swam with a wild one a few years ago. We were on holiday and came back to the caravan site in the late afternoon. There were a pod of dolphins in the sea. I got in the sea …I only took my shoes and glasses off…. then swam out about 20 yards. One dolphin stayed near the beach, it kept swimming near me. There were people in wet suits further out, and people in the shallows, me in the middle…..I can’t say it was spiritual, but it was amazing.
The next day there was a warning sign saying that the dolphin was called Georges who was an adolescent male. He had hurt himself because he was too curious and had been hurt by propellers on boats. Apparently you could catch illnesses like pneumonia from the damp air from his blow hole.
I didn’t care…. I had a wonderful experience.
Playing with apps, dreaming in naps, I see your eyes… ,, what a surprise!
I see your lips like pomegranate pips……..
I see your nose ,, the beauty it shows!
I see a face, hidden in lace historical place, ,, wonderful Grace.
Just playing with rhyme, enjoying this time .
I like taking a small sketchbook with me when I visit interesting places, its easy to snap a few photos on my phone, but much more challenging to sit for 20 to 30 minutes sketching the view.
Dorothy Clive Garden is beautiful. Even at this time of year when there are mainly spring flowers and the perrenials are not out yet you can see the towering trees, Bluebells, Magnolia’s and Rhododendrons.
We walked up to the tearoom and sat and drank coffee and ate icecream while the Sun (unusually for a Bank holiday weekend) shone down. It was so hot Richard bought me a wide brimmed hat from the gift shop.
I drew the view over the lawn to a low hedge where you can see evergreen trees and branches of deciduous trees just coming into leaf. In the distance was the misty blue grey hills of Shropshire. Over the ridge is a little village called Loggerheads.
Then we walked into the quarry garden. The blackbirds and robins were singing loudly. If you follow the sound of flowing water along the paths edged with Camellia, Rhododendron, Bluebells and other flowers which are just starting to open in the spring sunlight, you round a corner and see a tree that has been cut down to a stump that is still about 15 foot tall.
The stump has had the outline of a woodpecker carved into it, and apparently has had a greater spotted woodpecker (not sure if that’s the right name) living in a hole in it for the last two years.
Follow the sound further and you find the waterfall that runs from the back of the quarry down into its bowl. It is a man made feature but still lovely. I sat and sketched it, getting lost in how to represent the vegetation against the darkened rocks.
Finally we picked up some plants for the garden that we had bought earlier and walked down the slope to the pool at the bottom of the garden. This looks like it has recently been re-lined and the black liner is visible round the edges. Looking back up the hill various evergreen trees and bushes are visible, together with the new growth of Gunnera, which will grow massive over the summer. The pool is lacking its water lilies but they should be back soon. Halfway up the hill is a little wooden summer house or pavillion. The view is splendid from there.
3 drawings were enough. It was hot and I needed a drink. But I know I will go back again soon.
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I’m having a clear out/spring clean, and I found this sketchbook underneath a foot stool that isn’t used very often.
I always have to look in to see what I was doing, this was an orange book with nice thick cartridge paper, spiral bound so you can flip the pages and not end up trying to draw into the crease between them.
So I saw pictures of landscapes and some portraits.
I had clearly dated them so I know they were done over a couple of weeks in June 2011. I dont remember my health then, but I must have taken the week off from work and gone up to Yorkshire and also North Wales….
While these are black and white pencil sketches, I think they give enough detail so that you can understand the views I saw. I dont think they are that accurate, but I sometimes prefer drawing to photography. I have joined a group of urban sketchers, but I dont get out often enough these days.
The portraits are just about OK. I feel like they are all flawed in some way. Perhaps I had done them too rapidly ? I don’t think the fact that there is a drawing of a pint of beer in there is of too much importance. I must have been feeling in need of refreshment, the drawing by the river was at a pub in Saltaire and I think I drew the landscape while we stopped for lunch and a drink.
The sketch of the lighthouse is at Talacre beach in Wales. The figure at the top us actually a sculpture of a person. I dont think its safe to enter and in any case I think the door is locked.
I will keep this short. I dont want it to turn into one if those “slides of landscapes I took on holiday” moments!
I’ve posted A few digital drawings here, and one website, now defunct, was called sketchfu where I drew many of them. (I found out today its domain name is up for sale!).
The tools at sketchfu were quite crude, only 5 or 6 sizes of pen, a colour picker and a colour palette together with a slider that allowed you to change the opacity. But it was surprising what results people could get. There were various little competitions and challenges to copy various pictures and portraits.
I did some of the challenges, and I drew some portraits. You could not draw as well as in Photoshop but they came out OK……
You might notice the final drawing here is meant to be of professor Stephen Hawking. This was drawn on my tablet in an app called sketcher free. I did it a few weeks ago following his death. Instead of a stylus I used my middle finger to draw on the tablet screen.
I cannot tell you how uncontrolled and disappointing this last drawing feels in relation to the previous ones. If anyone is aware of a good drawing website, please let me know!
