Blues, turquoises and golds and a lovely English village

This painting is entitled "Golden Hen In The Orchard"

This little painting is entitled "Your Tree Or Mine?"

This is the preliminary watercolour sketch of my hen. Bit of an odd shape I know.

A decorated and stylised bird from my sketchbook

Stained glass window to the Caldicott family. Click photo to enlarge.

Cottage on the village green at Warborough

A village lane in Warborough

I actually put paint to paper this week and did a couple of little watercolours. One is of a golden hen in an orchard - very stylised as is my style. The other one is of two little birds who are having a bit of a confrontation over whose tree it is. Both pictures share more or less the same limited palette of blues, turquoises and golden browns. A lovely combination and one of my favourites. I have also included a tiny little sketchy watercolour of the finished picture. It doesn't really bear much relationship to the finished article but then a sketch doesn't have to. I have often produced a sketch and when I start painting or drawing the finished picture, there are so many changes that it doesn't seem to be related at all. That is the beauty of art though - it is an ongoing process and you never know where inspiration will take you.

I visited some friends over the weekend with my brother and his partner. They took us to a lovely little village called Warborough in Oxfordshire. It was the quintessential English village and utterly delightful. After a lovely meal in the local pub we strolled around the outskirts of the village and visited the parish church. We even spotted a couple of lapwings in the fields trying to distract us from seeing their nest. They had nothing to fear from us though. Because of the recent rains we have had, everything looked beautifully fresh and green. I love this time of the year for that reason. I envied the villagers with their lovely thatched cottages and cricket green but then I realised that there is a price to pay for living in heaven. They are inundated with cars during the summer weekends because the area is so lovely and a great place for walking dogs. I found the place so inspirational that I returned home and started on my little artworks while I was in the mood.

The parish church had some beautiful stained glass windows which are a passion of mine. The quality of the colours in stained glass is much more intense than I have seen in any other media. The one is have posted here is relatively recent and records a local Warborough family. I just love the deep raspberry and turquoises of the robes. Wonderful.

I have also included a very decorative and stylised bird from my sketchbook. I am so into birds at the moment. We are having large numbers of them visiting the birdtable in the garden and the fat balls hanging on the tree stump. It is so lovely to see the young joining in too. My birds don't resemble any of them of course, but I do draw the occasional realistic bird as well which I will post at a later date.

Spring Muse and Inky Birds

Tree Doodles

Mute Swan Preening

Rooks In Winter

Grey Heron

Pink Tulips
Local lane

Narcissi

Spring is beautifully underway in England now and I am really enjoying the countryside and all the inspiration it provides. Everything seems so much fuller, fresher and more colourful in the spring after the starkness of winter. I have included a few spring photos to show you what I mean. We are lucky in England to be surrounded by so much rural beauty. We are having quite a wet spring this year and it is making everything quite green and fresh.

I was inspired to do a couple of new pen and ink pictures - one is the grey heron, a bird which is seen quite frequently in our locality, standing in shallow water and just waiting for some unsuspecting frog or fish to wander past. They look beautifully graceful flying with their long, long legs stretched out behind them. I drew the picture in the pointillist technique to show off the delicate grey feathers.

The other is a very decorative, four part, tree inking. Nothing special but I just liked the shapes and wanted to create different textures with the same motif. It was VERY vaguely supposed to resemble a palm tree but I don't think it ended up that way. At least unlike any palm I have ever seen.

Rooks are probably my favourite birds and always epitomise the English countryside for me. I love to hear their noisy cawing in spring, high up in the trees rearing their young and squabbling amongst themselves. My drawing is quite an old one of a rook in a winter setting and was one which I used for Christmas cards some years ago.

The last drawing is a swan inspired by one of my photographs. Swans are so beautiful that it is almost impossible to take a poor photograph of them. They always look so beautiful and graceful. I loved the way this one was ruffling his feathers and his beak was half hidden in the snowy down as he preened. I don't know why he is a he - just one of those things I suppose....LOL I need a bit of colour after all these monochrome pictures so I will have to get the paint box out again.

My linocut is still not ready to be revealed. I am having trouble with the inking process. Getting just the right amount of ink is very difficult: too much and it is blobby, too little and it is patchy. I am pleased with the actual linocut but that was the easy bit. Still, after a bit of trial and error I will have something worth showing hopefully.

PS The nicked and blistered fingers are just starting to recover now!

Bluebells, Blossoms and Angel Ladies

These are my sketches of the animal angels

Isn't spring the most beautiful season of all? Every year when I see the gorgeous light greens of the trees and the beautiful spring blossoms I wish that it could last just a little bit longer. There is such a profusion of lovely flowers starting with the snowdrops and crocuses, daffodils and tulips, fruit tree blossoms and bluebells, magnolia and wisteria and then suddenly, they have all disappeared until next year. They are not around long enough to appreciate them properly. Don't get me wrong, I love the flowers of summer too, but spring flowers are special, and the trees and foliage never have that fabulous fresh, bright green shade again.

Today I visited my little bluebell dell. It is a tiny piece of woodland adjoining a local cemetery but to have the profusion of bluebells that it has it must be very ancient woodland. Bluebells are a particularly English phenomenon. Eighty percent of Europe's bluebells are found in England and we love each and every one of them. At least I do. There was quite a breeze this afternoon, and when I reached the spot, the fragrance of bluebells was overwhelming in a wonderful way. I took about a thousand pictures as I always do but I was particularly pleased about how two of them turned out and I have included these above. The sun was shining and that always improves my photography. See what you think of them anway.

I have also included a shot of blossom that I took last year. I think it is cherry but don't hold me to that. I think that it is such a lovely shade of pink. The flower picture is forget-me-not. A great favourite of the Victorians.

I also had a little doodle around with some animal and fish loving angel ladies. I love sketching angels for some reason. I just like the thought of beings with wings I think. As a child I always drew angels as female but when I think of "proper" angels, I think of them as being neither male nor female. Do you believe in them? I bet you do really but just don't want anyone to know. I will probably draw them as finished artworks one of these days. I will need to borrow the family hands though, as drawing hands in proportion is one of my artistic failures. It is so easy these days just to take a digital photo, upload to the computer, resize, print and then trace the finished hands in the exact position you require. Of course, if I was a proper artist I would simply draw them in real life but that is just asking for trouble. I hope you like them anyway.

Stone Angels

I enjoyed a lovely day in London yesterday exploring....cemeteries! Yes, I am one of those odd people who love looking around churchyards and cemeteries, examining headstones and photographing monumental angels. I am continually astounded by the wealth of beautiful graveyard sculptures we have in this country. I visited East Finchley Cemetery and the photos I have posted above, I found there, except for the figure of death and the child which is from Golders Green Crematorium. It is called "into the silent land" and is very poignant sculpture.

Sadly many of the lovely angelic sculptures have fallen over and some are broken, whether by natural causes or vandalism I am not sure. To me it is a tragedy. The carving of the majority of the statues is exquisite and could easily grace an art gallery or museum. These, by virtue of what they are, are left to the elements and quite a few are showing signs of weathering and damage to the features of the faces. I would like to photograph as many as I can whilst they are still in good condition. The Victorians were incredibly sentimental about death and it is to them that we owe the existence of so many lovely graveyard angels in the UK.

Waiting For The Bluebells

I am eagerly awaiting the appearance of the first bluebells so that I can go out and get some photos. I have about a million (underestimate) bluebell photos but like books and handbags you can never have too many!!! Here is one of my most popular Flickr pix of all time - bluebells of course.