Two of the many ancient oaks in Bradgate Park, in Leicester, looking all grizzled and wise against the January wreckage of the bracken. I fancied that they were having a discussion on some suitably serious oaky topic. The orange of the bracken balances the cool…
Continue reading Elder Statesmen
A few years back, I established a little tradition of painting the bluebells en plein air. They were usually my first plein air piece for the year, as their appearance coincides with the warmer weather. What with one thing and another, and Open Studios happening…
Continue reading The Bluebells Were Almost Over
This year’s INSIGHT picture is a new drawing of an old favourite subject. There is a little group of beech trees on the henge at Avebury, Wiltshire that have a particularly impressive set of roots visible. I think that they are called the three sisters…
Continue reading Interwoven
This is the wall of rock that rises from the sunken road’s surface to the viewpoint of Multistorey. The title, Elevation, refers to the elevated pathway above it as well as to its verticality (a plan drawing lays out the detail of a horizontal surface…
Continue reading Elevation
Memories of summer under the beeches… these trees line the side of a minor road that snakes up Nuthanger Down. We’re looking at them from the side that the road is on; on the other side, there is a steep, grassy slope down to the…
Continue reading Driftwood
This is based on a fairly old photograph from 2018, albeit of a place I know well and visit often. There is a distinct blue cast in that photograph that I found attractive, but it was difficult to reconcile the blue-green of the trees with…
Continue reading Effervescent
I very seldom reuse a source photograph, but I did here. The photograph was taken in 2018 and I used it that year to make Hanging Ash, a monochrome ink on kaolin-coated board, a drawing that was subsequently sold at an art fair. The bluff…
Continue reading Strata
This is based on a photograph that I took on a walk in east Hampshire which included two bridleways called Standfast Lane and Mill Lane. I can’t remember which lane I took the photograph on , but it doesn’t really matter because Standfast is a…
Continue reading Standfast
This is another scene from my walk in the Shropshire hills in January. The wall alongside the track I was following had fallen into disrepair some time ago, and had been populated by holly, rowan and oak. This was near the top of the Stiper…
Continue reading Trees on a Dry Stone Wall
This shows rowan trees atop a tumbledown dry stone wall at Brook Vessons nature reserve in Shropshire. The location, which I visited in January and would like to return to in a milder month, is part of a derelict hillside mining village abandoned in the…
Continue reading Winter Bank