Botanical illustration course - roll up, roll up

I hope this might be of interest to some Lancaster based folk! My new Botanical Illustration class starts on Jan 25th. I really need 8 students in order for it to go ahead - if you think you know someone who may be interested, please forward it! If you click on the image of the flyer it will open at a larger scale in a separate window.
Note that anyone on benefits only pays £5!

3 views of Bowland/Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!


These oil sketches are a bit late in arriving on the blog, as I actually painted them late last summer. The Forest of Bowland is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) located in north Lancashire, almost on my doorstep. Bowland is mainly barren gritstone fells , fringed with struggling stony hill farms, and lower down a jumbled mosaic of walled pastures. Lots of sheep, and the UK's densest population of hen harriers. As in most prolific, not stupidest. The light is beautiful, especially towards evening as the sun reflects off the Irish Sea. I have a theory that places near the sea have especially nice light. This is probably rubbish, or coincidence, however, I'm sticking to it.

Most people scurry past Bowland on the M6, on their way to the Dales, or the Lake District. A recent TV series may change this, though, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon visited Bowland in the extremely surreal comedy series 'The Trip' and then the Guardian wrote a follow up travel article for the NW of England. Come and visit, and buy some local artwork...

http://www.forestofbowland.com/

PS> One of my New Year's resolutions is to try to update my blog a little more frequently. Part time teacher training is sapping my writing power. Plants versus Zombies on my iPhone may be another culprit, but it's much more fun than writing about teaching theory, so I don't mind. I am trying to learn drawing on my iPhone but so far have no publishable results.

Ellel Artists' Studios - first painting!

I painted my first picture in my new studio today! Ellel Artist's Studios is on the first floor of an ancient corn mill, 2 minutes walk from my house in Galgate. It has great light due to large windows down both sides of the room, but unfortunately those large windows also mean its a wee bit on the chilly side. I managed to work there for two hours today by putting a gas heater on either side of my desk. Ashby lay with his head so close to the heater I'm surprised he didn't singe his whiskers.
I'm currently on the lookout for other artists to share the space with. There's just two of us at the moment, but there's room for at least another two...

I'm painting some of the things from my shelf of 'stuff' - things I pick up when I'm dog walking, mainly. Sadly, moving house and country frequently in the last few years has meant that I've abandoned a lot of things, like my beaver chewed sticks from the Danube floodplain. But since moving back to the Pudding Islands I've already got a little coastal collection building up. Beaches are the best place to find interesting things. When I'm home for Christmas in Fife I'll pick up my skull collection. I left it in my old bedroom while I was living in Vienna. My parents will probably be grateful because they use the room for guests.

Does anyone know what kind of shell the bigger one is?

Mistletoe sunset

Just been back to Vienna for a few days. In autumn and winter the mistletoe is so obvious silhouetted amongst the stark branches. It looks like baubles, or big round birds nests. This watercolour is looking across the Alte Donau as the sun sets.

High altitude rainforest illustration, in progress

Work in progress. The illustration is to show the rare indri, the largest lemurs in Madagascar, in their mountain rainforest. They look like giant black and white teddy bears with crazy green saucer eyes. Every morning indri families get together and sing. This sounds charming but in fact their singing is more like a siren, and the sound travels for miles.
The illustration will be used on the sixth and final poster for the Ako Project environmental conservation campaign, http://www.lemurreserve.org/akoproject.html. The posters are used in schools all over Madagascar.
I'll update this post as the illustration progresses.

Masoala illustration finished...yay

I had to make a couple of changes, if you compare it with the earlier versions (see a few posts down) I've changed the pool in the foreground to an inlet of the sea. As was pointed out to me, there isn't much point in keeping your dugout canoe on a pond when there's the Indian Ocean just round the corner...
It also makes more sense like this in terms of perspective and colour, I think.
Next I need to scan it, but that's a big job, because it has to be done in two bits and stitched together.

Right now I'm off to pack for a weekend in Devon : ) great, except for the awful drive down. Was thinking about when we were living in Vienna, if you drove 7 or 8 hours in any direction you'd get into at least one other country. Here, we get to pass Birmingham at just about rush hour.

Recent oil landscape

I recently completed this oil landscape for my friend Giselle. She used to live near Galgate and wanted a picture which would remind her of the area. I cycled and walked around a lot looking and photographing, with enjoyment but little inspiration, until one morning I found this wall curving over the fields, and used it as my starting point. The painting is a sort of composite image of the upper valley of the river Conder, which downstream, flows right past Giselle's old house.

It's painted mainly using palette knives, which I love. The tone of the painting is deliberately quite flat, my main interest being in the shapes and colours of the fields.