Aloe Vera and Custard Tarts

I took a small Khadi sketchbook with me on my recent trip to Portugal and drew en plein air with Daler Rowney soft pastels. The landscape is very dramatic and I spotted these gigantic wintry Aloe Veras spearing the land and sky. The colours are so intense in the bright winter sunshine, so different to theContinue reading “Aloe Vera and Custard Tarts”

Back From The Sun

Husb and I have just got back from a few days in the sun. We bagged ourselves a package holiday to southern Portugal, Albufeira, to get some winter warmth. We had to leave the cats in the hands of a kitty sitter and they look fatter than ever. And I suspect that Sparta Puss mightContinue reading “Back From The Sun”

Workers’ Mates

I’m a gallery artist at the excellent Workers Gallery in Ynyshir where up to 20 invited artists are selected annually to have a square metre of permanent exhibition space and to work with the gallery to develop the exhibition programme and run regular residency and demo days. The Workers’ focuses on art made in Wales butContinue reading “Workers’ Mates”

Punjab To Rhondda With Cake

I’m doing a one-day artist residency at The Workers Gallery in Ynyshir this coming Friday so if you’re in the area, or fancy that trip up the Rhondda Valley that you’ve been promising yourself, please pop in and see me. I’ll make a cake. Maybe a Victoria Sandwich. When I did a residency in Pakistan,Continue reading “Punjab To Rhondda With Cake”

Close Up

Although my visit to Avebury on Friday was a quick one, I spent some time looking closely at the magnificent stones there. They are covered with fantastic growths of lichens and the surface of the stones has been weathered and eroded across the millenia. I took a close-up drawing of a section of this stone.

As Dark As It Gets

This started as a very pale watercolour landscape that I uploaded onto my Samsung Galaxy Note tablet into a free Markers app. I’ve been making it darker and darker with cross-hatching and scribbles but I think this is about as dark as I can go with it. The slides show the process from the originalContinue reading “As Dark As It Gets”

Getting Somewhere

I started this little watercolour a couple of weeks ago, when I was in Ceredigion, using Winsor & Newton half pans onto St. Cuthbert’s Mill watercolour paper. I’m not used to watercolours and the scene before me was very pale and misty and I was a bit disappointed by it, to be honest. So IContinue reading “Getting Somewhere”

Urban Shredder

Husb and I spent the day in Cardiff at the Mill Lane Arts Week en plein air public art event. Most of the artists there today were painting but I don’t really ‘get’ paint so I did a collage. I’ve been preparing collage papers all week ( please see the last few blog posts) andContinue reading “Urban Shredder”

Another Quickie

I’m so lucky to live near the sea and Husb and I are often strolling along the beach, or we’ll go for a short drive to walk along cliffs or along an estuary path. I’ve started to carry my Winsor & Newton half pan watercolours and a Waterford glued block of watercolour paper to captureContinue reading “Another Quickie”

PsychedeliCat 2

Not quite as psychedelic as yesterday’s PsychedeliCat but still pretty colourful. I have a miserable summer cold and my brain has turned into cotton wool so I’m entertaining myself doing little pencil drawings of cats onto my Waterford watercolour block and colouring them in with Winsor & Newton half pan watercolours. I’ll get back toContinue reading “PsychedeliCat 2”