I did some quick, impressionistic sketches while I was walking around on my visit to Portugal a couple of weeks ago. The earth is stratified, horizontally and vertically and made up of bright hot colours, reds, oranges, yellows and browns which contrast so vividly with the brilliant blue of the sky and sea. I usedContinue reading “Impression Of Heat”
Category Archives: Travel drawings
Balanced Rocks
Exploring the local beaches around Albufeira last week, Husb and I found a cove full of balanced rock sculptures. It was a small sandy cove with a rock pavement jutting out from the base of the deeply fissured cliff and it was covered with little cairns. I drew this one with black, sanguine and whiteContinue reading “Balanced Rocks”
Hot Earth
Here’s another drawing I did into my little Khadi sketchbook last week on the coast of Portugal. The colours were incredible, bright blue sky and sea and hot red and orange earths veined with dark greys. Extraordinary geology. There were also a lot of rock balancing sculptures in a little cove just to theContinue reading “Hot Earth”
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”