Watercolour Trees and John Blockley

I decided to go a bit colourful and unrealistic with these watercolour trees but I think they look quite nice.

A pen and ink group of very well dressed ladies wearing some rather unusual hats.

I thought you might like to see what I am sketching at the moment. I love peeking into other peoples' sketchbooks. A lot of my sketches never actually make it to finished drawings and sometimes the ones that do are completely unrecognisable from the original sketch. I decided to stick to a gold and magenta colour palette with these. It is a combination that I think looks really good together.

An attempt at a watercolour tree sketch "a la John Blockley".

These gorgeously colourful textile pieces are by the very talented Sherrill Kahn. I love her fabric doll necklaces which have a wonderful graphic and native look to them. Sherrill is another multi-talented craftswoman who paints, weaves, quilts, beads, sews, knits, crochets and draws. Wouldn't it be lovely to do all that, but where does she find the time? I have a couple of her books and they are a delight. You may need to click on the pictures to enlarge them to get the full details.

The images below are the work of the late and much lamented watercolourist John Blockley. I love the way he rendered his trees with a watercolour wash roughly tree shaped and then the branches stroked in. I would have loved to have seen him working. His pictures are full of texture and beautifully subtle colour.

We have had some very cold (for the UK) weather for the past three weeks. Nothing in comparison to the weather some of you are getting of course, but everything is relative isn't it? What we have to put up with in the freezing tootsies department we make up for in the beauty of the countryside. A hoar frost which covers the trees in white crystals is utterly stunning, to my mind anyway. It is almost more beautiful than pristine snow, and we have had quite a few to admire recently. Unfortunately, the downside has been pavements and roads like skating rinks. I had to assist several women in picking up a poor elderly lady who had lost her footing the other day, and she was far from the only one. Makes me wonder whether we should all have shoes with spikes on the soles in winter. There would be far fewer people in A & E departments with fractured limbs. Like everything in life there is an upside and a downside - keeps the balance though!

My artist this week is no longer with us but he has left some wonderful art to remind us that he was here. He is the well known watercolourist John Blockley.When I first started drawing and painting back in 1990ish I found his books on watercolour landscapes a wonderful source of inspiration. A lot of his work is of the Cotswold area of England and I had found someone who also loved trees, if his paintings are anything to go by. His work was his personal view and feelings about a place, rather than a literal representation and he also produced more abstract work. I have only posted images of the more realistic work as I am not really a fan of abstraction in art. I love his pencil sketches and the shapes of his trees. I tried very hard to emulate his style back in the 90's before realising that I had to find my own. I treasure his books that I own though and often browse through them. I wish I had his talent with landscape. Some of his work can be found here at the Manor House Gallery site and elsewhere on the web if you type his name in a search engine.