Pen
-
Black Mountains – Lower Slopes
Trees present an interesting drawing challenge. There is (normally) just one trunk, then a few main branches, then many smaller branches and finally many, many leaves. However, if one sketches the same level of detail for each leaf as is given to the trunk then the drawing will never be finished! This particular tree is…
-
David’s Admirers
We all know that Florence is full of Renaissance art – and if we stop to think about it we also know that in consequence Florence is full of art-admiring tourists, their backpacks, their cameras and camera phones. So it seemed fitting to include, and indeed emphasise, these onlookers in a scene from the Galleria…
-
Ostrich
To drawing something, it is of course necessary to figure out where everything should go on the paper – the relative sizes of the objects in the scene and how they all fit together. So it was that when I drew this ostrich I was quite surprised to discover just how small an ostrich head…
-
Drawing Room
This scene of calm was the room where we rested after one of our days walking a section of Offa’s Dyke. There is a great contrast between the light and dark areas in this scene, which is always an interesting challenge to achieve with only a black pen. The walk was a challenge too of…
-
Under Reigate Hill
Well obviously this isn’t really “under” the hill – this is the path that runs from the main Reigate Hill road to Wray Lane, and so the path effectively runs across the foot of the hill. However, to me the phrase “under the hill” sums this up rather well and I get to choose the…
-
New Boots
An unexpected side-effect of the pandemic lockdown was that we started walking a lot. Well there wasn’t much else we were allowed to do outdoors and we are lucky enough to live only a few minutes from a range of hills covered in walking paths. Of course, if you start walking a lot there comes…
-
A Perspective on Stowe
Stowe House sits in the middle of the equally magnificent Stowe Gardens, now run by the National Trust. The house itself contains a school about which regretably I know very little – which I’m sure is my loss rather than theirs! However, I do know that the gardens and buildings of Stowe offer many amazing…
-
A Gate in York
York has many streets which are called gates – and this is a drawing of one of them. This gate is straighter than many, although perhaps not quite as straight as I have drawn it. I think too that there are often many more people walking down this street – perhaps everyone is elsewhere because…
-
Lilies
This was the first drawing that I did after I joined a local art group, pretending that I knew what I was doing with a drawing pen and a nice blank sheet of white paper! The pressure of that moment must have helped as in the end the flowers seem quite easily recognisable.
Doodling ... 