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.

Harvest Moon

The full moon last Thursday (23rd) was lovely. Around the equinox you do seem to see the best moons, I'm not really sure why.

Cartmel Peninsula/Autumn

A sketch I made yesterday from Warton Crag looking north/ north west across the Cartmel Peninsula towards the higher hills of the Lake District. I drew in white pastel, on a base of acrylic - if I ever have left over paint I just cover a page of my sketch book. It was amazing light; the hills were lit in parts by glimpses of sun which had escaped the dark clouds, creating small golden fringes and pools of light which contrasted with the darkness of the hills. Dark, because unlike most of Lancashire, or the UK for that matter, north west Lancashire and south Cumbria is still largely covered by woodland - hazel, birch, holly, ash, yew, rowan, elder, lots of berries looking beautiful at the moment. Today it's cold and wet, the heating is back on for the first time, Autumn has definitely arrived.

Illustration in progress...

I decided that it might help me reduce procrastination time if I published work in progress; my 8 followers will be so breathless with anticipation that I will work faster. It's the central image for a poster about Masoala Rainforest in the north east of Madagascar. I'm painting it in acrylic, because I like the way it allows you to build layers on top of one another.

Alien

End of the summer, and water margins all* over Europe are covered in a jungley mass of pink and white bloom; the 'Invasive Alien' is in flower. Impatiens glandulifera, or Himalayan balsam, is a much maligned plant that was introduced from Asia about 100 years ago, as a garden ornament, possibly to provide shelter for gnomes. It really liked Europe, and has now spread almost everywhere, usually along riverbanks.

I think Himalayan Balsam is the closest thing we have to a Triffid. It's so in your face, it grows in dense massive patches and easily reaches two metres tall or more, it has a weird pungent smell, giant weird knobby roots, and an awesomely effective reproductive technique - you just kick it or send your dog in, and the seed pods explode open, pinging seeds for a good few metres - enough to cross your average smallish river or road. I know, because whilst doing my Msc I was charged with the task of surveying and mapping it in the area around Lancaster Unversity. It's spread a lot since then.

If you research the species at all, you get lots of terms appearing like 'invasive, swamp, threaten, out-compete, out of control, rampant, non-native, stealing our jobs, eating our children...OK, maybe not the last two, yet, although unlike humans, it is evolving fast. It's reassuring to know that xenophobia is alive and well in the world of ecology.

It is true that Himalayan Balsam is incredibly successful, ecologically speaking - it dominates and is able to rapidly expand its range. But none of the reports I've read mentioned the fact that bees absolutely love it, and at a time of year when there are few other flowering wild plants, it is a haven for insects of all kinds. I also seriously doubt whether it has caused any extinctions. I suspect it's main crime is being a successful Asian.

If I ever exhibit with the RHS again, I will be showing a series of portraits of Aliens.



* Maybe not all, yet, for instance, I don't know if it's reached Iceland yet. I still got some kicking to do.

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.

Fife watercolour sketches

Was in Fife visiting my parents this weekend and took my watercolours. The evening skies have been amazing over the last month, I'm sure because of the ash in the atmosphere.
Why do cats always cram themselves into boxes that are too small for them? Flora bulges over the edge.

View from an exam room

Its exam season and I'm doing some invigilating at Lancaster University. The other day I forgot to bring anything to read, but I had a black biro pen, so I drew the trees next to the fairly uninspiring building site out the window. It entertained me for a surprisingly long time, although I think I frightened the student just in front of the window. I was considering drawing the students but it would have been too obvious. I'm fairly pleased with how the drawing turned out. It sort of reflects the bleak atmosphere of an exam room, and my feeling which I've always had, whether sitting exams or supervising them, that what's outside the window is always of greater interest.
Maybe would have been better if I'd included the window frames - works better when seen 'framed' in the sketchbook.

I've had loads of really great bird encounters lately but unfortunately have not drawn any of them.
On the 1st of April I was walking by the River Wenning, just west of Hornby, where it meets the River Lune, and saw clouds of acrobatic swallow like birds, which confused me, as it was still freezing cold, and too early in the year for swallows. It turns out that they were sand martins, which return from their migration earlier than swallows and house martins. There are sand martins living all along this stretch of river, and this afternoon I spent five minutes watching them darting over the water catching insects, and popping in and out of the holes they nest in, on the opposite bank. They're lovely little birds and were zooming right past me.

On the 11th of April I saw a Marsh Harrier in the RSPB reserve Leighton Moss, which is about 15 miles north of here in the beautiful South Lakes. Marsh Harriers are quite rare, as they live in reed beds, which are nationally very scarce. They are a bit smaller than buzzards, and a totally different shape. Have a look at http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/m/marshharrier/index.aspx. It was circling round and round just above the reeds, hunting, occasionally diving down out of site. He (I think) was getting frequently harried by buzzards and crows, guess they don't get on too well.
There was also a couple of Great Crested Grebes, nesting just in front of the hide. Also really beautiful birds.

Finally, well, for this entry, we have a nestful of baby house martins, conveniently residing just above my study window. The babies screech and cheep every few minutes when they get fed.

Elm twig

This watercolour sketch is of an elm twig, with its flowers. Elms flower before the leaves come out. This particular tree is a lovely large one, in a nearby field. I'd passed it several times but never before realised it was an elm - my parents were visiting and Dad identified it. I was recently reading about elms in Robert Macfarlane's lovely book 'The Wild Places'. He writes of how until relatively recently, elms used to be a really distinctive feature of the English countryside, as can be seen from old landscape paintings. John Constable painted many landscapes with elm trees. Elms were planted to mark waypoints, and lived to be hundreds of years old. This link shows a painting Constable made of an elm's trunk: http://tinyurl.com/y3hrczy.

Sadly, Dutch elm disease has decimated elm trees, and often the only ones left surviving are small ones, inside hedges. The beetles that bear the fungi causing the disease apparently target larger trees. Dutch elm disease arrived on the south coast of England in the late 1960's, in a shipment of logs from the US; and within ten years about 30 million died. Large elms are really scarce now. I think I will draw the Galgate elm tree later in the summer, when it is in leaf.

First sketch in the new house : )

Happy Easter. We have just moved into our new house, near Lancaster, NW England. This is Johnny 'relaxing' with his iPhone after a hard evenings unpacking. And Ashby just relaxing.

Moving has been a fairly protracted event, as we drove from Vienna and stopped off four times along the way in Salzburg, Trier, Brussels, and Leamington Spa. Springtime had already arrived in Vienna, the Saturday before we left was a lovely 19˚C. I was playing with Vienna Pipes and Drums in the St Patrick's Day Parade, my farewell gig. It was also lovely weather in Trier, an old town on the river Mosel, near the border of Luxembourg. Unfortunately things degenerated from then on; we returned to the UK in time to experience bitter north winds and snow...

I'm renting some studio space in Hornby, and am currently setting things up. It's situated in a beautiful location in the Lune Valley, east of Lancaster. Just across the fields is the confluence of the rivers Wenning and the Lune. Hornby is situated close to the border with North Yorkshire, and as I drive there I get lovely views across the fells, including the prominent hill Ingleborough. Also a great area for wildlife, I've often seen kingfishers on the Lune and there have been recent reports of otters. : ) Some drawings coming soon.

McCrae Conservation and Education Fund

I'd like to share this update of the Ako Project, an environmental education initiative in Madagascar. I've been working on commissions for the Ako Project since 2007 and the second page shows the four posters I have created thus far. They're being distributed to primary schools around the country.
I have a deep fascination for the island of Madagascar - it's biodiversity is astonishing and utterly unique (over 80% of species on the island are endemic). It's the only place in the world where new primate species are regularly discovered, and amongst the 99 extant species is the world's smallest primate - the 30g Madame Berthe's Mouse Lemur. Until as recently as the 1700's (the date of extinction is disputed) there were also giant lemurs (240 kg), larger than gorillas. These were almost certainly driven to extinction by humans, along with the endemic pygmy hippos, giant tortoises, and the worlds largest birds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aepyornis, which were over 3 metres tall and weighed 400 kg. The flora is equally amazing - with as many as 12,000 plant species - although many of the species, particularly in remote forested areas, have not yet been scientifically named. In Madagascar there are 6 species of baobab trees; only one is found elsewhere in Africa.

Sadly, Madagascar's biodiversity is under extreme threat. Over 95% of the forest cover has already been destroyed, and the situation is worsening. The Malagasy people are amongst the poorest in the world. The majority of the population live in rural areas and survive by subsistence farming, relying upon dwindling forest resources for charcoal, and for tavy, (slash and burn agriculture). Slow growing primary forest does not have a chance to recover, and when you fly over Madagascar what you see are endless bare mountains with giant red gashes where the soil is being washed away. Such land is no longer any good for agriculture. Life is incredibly difficult for most Malagasy. Access to a good education is almost impossible in most areas of the country, and as such there are almost no possible escape routes from poverty. People are forced to continue living in an unsustainable manner because they truly have no alternative.

Madagascar's nature reserves are also under extreme theat from illegal logging. Following a coup in February 2009 which saw the president of Madagascar replaced at gunpoint by the mayor of the capital city (a former DJ), most international aid agencies withdrew their support from the country and the nature reserves lost their protection. Gangs of armed bands, financed by foreign timber traders, went into the nature reserves and plundered the valuable hardwood such as ebonies and rosewood. A commercial bushmeat market has sprung up over the last year and a half. The tourism industry all but collapsed in 2009, with huge loss of revenue.

Sometimes it is difficult to feel any hope in the face of such difficulties, however, there are so many amazing organisations and individuals working to improve the situation.
If you want to help Madagascar, consider supporting:

UNICEF Madagascar - http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/madagascar.html
Azafady - http://www.madagascar.co.uk/
WWF Madagascar - http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/wherewework/madagascar/index.html

In addition, consider taking a holiday in Madagascar. You will have a truly amazing experience, and you'll be bringing much needed income to the local people. Visit the national parks and private reserves. Eco tourism needs to be more valuable than illegal logging.
It's such a great country. The people are really friendly, (they quite literally will answer yes to everthing, simply to please you) and the whole country is, how to put it, hilarious. It's the only place I've ever been where travelling on top of a fridge freezer on the back of a pick up truck, with seven other people, is a normal state of affairs. In the south east of the country dug out canoe is actually the most efficient means of transport, despite the abundance of crocodiles.

I highly recommend a visit : )

Three pencil sketches

I drew these while I was staying at my parents house in Fife. I like to sketch people when they're concentrating on something, although it doesn't always lead to the most flattering portrait. My Dad was drawing leaves while I was drawing him - he's taking a botanical art course at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh and had homework. Dad got fed up of drawing the leaf and started to draw Johnny, who developed a nice scowl ; ), so I turned my attention to him.

Yesterday there was heavy wet snow blown by a gale force north east wind, and the cats were hibernating by the wood burning stove. Louis, below, likes to be the centre of attention so he posed very nicely for me. I used a 2B pencil, a putty rubber, and my finger for smudging. Really, this is all you need to make a very nice drawing.

Long eared owl

Painted in watercolour and gouache. I was watching Futurama recently and noticed that in the future it is flocks of owls, rather than pigeons, which gather in the city streets. I'm looking forward to this. I'm fairly sure I saw a long eared owl in a forestry plantation near my parent's house in Fife, Scotland, - you usually see owls if you walk there late on a winters afternoon. But it might have been a short eared owl.

I have a cold and feel utterly minging. What better time to paint myself?

Monoprint

Monoprints are created by covering a sheet of paper with paint, then pressing another sheet on top and drawing or scratching it. Like when using carbon paper, the drawing is then transferred onto the back. I made this just because I had some spare paint, but it reminded me that actually it can be a really interesting technique. I used to do this at school quite a lot, I found it quite magical how a drawing is transformed into a print. It allows little room for error, as every mark shows - but on the plus side this results in a very spontaneous image. I think I might experiment more deliberately with monoprints.

Oil painting of rooks

I've been working hard to finish some bird paintings for my series Flocks and Shoals. However, last week I found out that the restaurant/gallery where I was due to exhibit in early April is closing, so I'm considering my options. We also had some very good news - Johnny was offered, and has accepted, a job at Lancaster University in the north west of England. We'll shortly be migrating back north to Lancaster (we both studied there). The immediate future is still a bit unknowable, but at least I now know where I'll be based for a few years. Yay! I'm trying to decide whether to try and find another venue for my paintings in Vienna, or to find a gallery in the UK.
This is an oil painting I did last week, based on all my sketches of the rooks. I painted the whole canvas very dark (Prussian) blue, in swirling strokes. Once it was completely dry I painted on the sky using a palette knife and a stiff bristle brush, leaving the shapes of the rooks. I'm fairly happy with the painting, I think the shiny dark paint works well as interesting negative shapes. It doesn't photograph so well, but this gives an idea.

Martens Ate My Car

This drawing depicts a family of beech martens, Martes foina, eating our car, a Skoda Felicia. Few people back home in Scotland believe me, but this is a genuine and frequently ocurring hazard encountered here in Vienna, and apparently in much of Europe - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beech_Marten Beech martens are actually only the size of large cats, and normally chew brake cables or spark plugs rather than dismantling the entire thing. Our car, named Crapbag, fell prey after only three weeks of living here, and unfortunately my third party insurance did not cover the car for being eaten.
I drew the sketch in pencil and added the colour in Photoshop.

I drew this on a base of leftover oil and acrylic paint. I hate wasting paint so whenever I still have some on my brushes at the end of the day I paint it onto a random page in my sketchbook. I like drawing on top of paint, it adds some texture, and I also prefer drawing on non-white surfaces.
Ashby is feeling a bit wobbit at the moment (Scots for poorly/off-colour) as he cut his paw on some ice three days ago and it's taking a while to heal. He can only go out for short lead walks wearing a sock to keep it clean. He really doesn't appreciate the socks: