Little Cartoon Dogs Doodle

There's nothing more fun to draw than little cartoon dogs. Anyone who loves dogs should try it. Dog's expressions are just so great.

Ashby has been stealing food lately, (he appears to be in a Naughty phase at the moment). The look on his face when he's caught trying to cram in an entire lemon cake is priceless - as is the happy look after a successful cake scrat (for some idea of it, see Top left dog).

On a separate note, it sometimes bothers me that, for an artist, I struggle to say anything meaningful about my own art. (For example: They're just little, cartoon dogs. On cardboard.) But I've been sorting through artists statements at work recently, and realised that artists divide into two kinds, the kind who are good at writing pretentious bollocks talk, and the kind who aren't. And the artists who are good at the silly statements don't sell any more art. This made me feel better. Mwuh huhu.
Now I'm going to work on my bollocks talk.

Hens

Some watercolour scribbles of my Mum's hens - including Frodo the fluffy legged cockerel and the new chickens who are yet to be named. They're confined to a run at the moment, because a pair of crows are determined to eat chicken nuggets for tea.
Frodo is a fairly recent addition to the flock, named because he is tiny but with huge fluffy feet. He's only a third of the size of the Black Rock hens, and we were fairly impressed that he's achieved some offspring!

The watercolour below is a slightly more detailed study of some of the hens, painted indoors (as opposed to in the hen run)

Kely Masoala

I was at kely (which means little in Malagasy) Masoala last week, a Madagascan rainforest in Zoo Zurich - an 11,000 sqm hall filled with authentic Masoala species - plants, birds, bats, lemurs.. even ants and termites which hitched a lift by accident, and are now thriving. Soil had to be imported, to allow the development of authentic fungi and bacteria, apparently this was the most difficult thing to get through customs.The project is only 10 years old, yet already gives an amazingly authentic impression of being in a Madagascan rainforest, and some trees are already 25 m tall. The planning of the hall took years, and it has been been designed to look as natural as possible. Speaking from experience, the whole thing compares very favourably, actually - no malarial mosquitoes, fewer spiders, no crocodiles. There are dugout canoes, but you're not expected to use them. Kely Masoala works in partnership with the national park in Masoala in Madagascar, and raises funds for en situ conservation and humanitarian projects, it also carries out a great deal of educational projects to raise awareness of Madagascar.

These are a couple of sketches I made, of a panther chameleon and tomato frogs. These frogs are endemic to the Masoala area of Madagascar, which is in the north east part of the island. They are pretty hilarious to look at, they really do look like sort of over ripe squashy tomatoes.
The chameleon was really slowly hunting, slow, that is, until it shoots out it's bizarre tongue, which must be at least 25 cm long. Malagasy people apparently mistrust chameleons because they look both into the future and the past at the same time.

Bend in the river

This pencil sketch is of a bend in the little River Conder, through the fields near our house. I find that often the most interesting thing about drawing landscapes in pencil is trying to get the light right, in this case the strong afternoon sunlight on the field behind the trees. It helps if you half shut your eyes when you look at things. The experience was made more challenging by having to hold onto Ashby with one hand in case he ran off after the sheep.
I love this time of year. It's light here until about 10pm. On 21st June, I went up to Silverdale with some friends to celebrate midsummer. This is a photo looking north as the last rays of sun disappear into the hills. (and my friend Owen prancing around)

RHS Medal!

I'm very happy today because my collection of seed related paintings won a Silver Gilt medal from the RHS. They're currently hanging at the NEC, Birmingham, at BBC Gardeners World Live. (You have until Sunday evening to see them!)
My exhibit was composed of 8 paintings of seeds, which are part of a Seed Alphabet I painted in 2008 and 2009 for Jelitto Staudensamen, a perennial seed company. There's one painting for each letter of the alphabet (except X - they couldn't find a seed named with an X). You can see all of the paintings at www.see-seeds.co.uk. They were painted with the aid of a microscope. There are also three larger drawings, pencil and pastel on paper that I stained with tea. These are of Teasel, Honesty, and an Opium Poppy. I used posh Austrian tea to stain the paper of the teasel (I was still living in Vienna), and PG Tips from Spar for the other two, interestingly I found the PG Tips has a far superior staining effect.
The poppy is on my home page at the moment, www.jmr.org.uk, and the drawing of Honesty is above. Looking at seeds through a microscope is really interesting, they look totally different to what you may expect. I was fairly enchanted to find out that poppy seeds resemble footballs.

The second painting of the pansies is the first study I ever made of flowers, a watercolour that I painted, aged 9, for St Andrews Flower Show. I think it actually won first prize. I remember being very happy that I won, but slightly embarrassed in case any of my friends found out that I painted flowers.

Green June rain

This watercolour is of Caton Moor, the view from my studio in Hornby. The first proper rain we've had in ages made the bright green and newly mown yellow fields glow almost luminously, contrasted by dark steaming woods and hedges, and the mist on the moor merged into the sky.

Lune estuary

This watercolour sketch shows the estuary of the River Lune, looking over to Sunderland Point. I painted it in half an hour on Saturday morning as the tide was, literally, racing back in. By the time I walked back, all the little muddy creeks in the salt marsh were filling up and the sand/mud seen in the painting had been completely covered. The coast around the Morecambe Bay area needs to be treated with a lot of respect.
Saw some cormorants, shelduck and black backed gulls. And a dim witted Banana labrador looking for fish. Ashby's been christened by the boy next door, who has a chocolate Labrador puppy.