Animals
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Bird Tile
These tiles were almost ubiquitous in Britain in the 1970s – my parents house built at the start of that decade had them on the bathroom walls, and the house I am currently living in (coincidentally also built in the early 1970s) still has these tiles on the walls of one bathroom! As I was…
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Toque Macaque
These monkeys are quite common in Sri Lanka, particularly near Sigiriya where the original photo of this character was taken. These creatures look very sweet and endearing when you first see them, particularly with their quirky hairstyles, but there is a good reason why monkeys have a reputation for mischief. Just a few minutes before…
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Trichromatic Safari
Two things surprised me on a short safari that I took in Sri Lanks to see their native elephants* in the wild: I decided to try a multi-monochrome technique with this picture – “multi” becoming “three” in this case as I perceived three components to the image – the elephant, the onlookers and the forest/grassland…
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Cat Temple
In the suburbs of Tokyo there is a curious temple, properly called Daikeizan Gotokuji but popularly known as the Cat Temple. The story goes that a local ruler was invited by a cat into the temple and thereby found shelter from a sudden and violent thunderstorm. In gratitude, the ruler dedicated the temple to the…
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Flamingos
I have seen flamingos several times in bird parks and zoos, but I had always understood that they were native to some far-flung and exotic continent, like Africa perhaps, or one of the Americas. So it was quite a surprise to see them in the wild on the coast near Montpelier. I know they are…
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Monkey Warrior
The Grand Palace in Bankok contains many amazing sights and some wonderfully intricate buildings. During our visit my eye was particularly caught by several of the statues, and in particular by these monkey (or demon?) warriors that support two enormous chedi, or stupa. This drawing is a close up of one of these characters, one…
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Milky Stork
We saw this chap in the Bird Park in Kuala Lumpur, although since I have elected not to paint any background I suppose the exact location is not really important. I have always been impressed at how bold pictures can be created using very few colours. Initially I guess this was done to simplify the…
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Bullock
We often walk past a field used to graze young bullocks, who always seem rather cute and very inquisitive. Of course, one reason why I have a positive reaction to these cattle is because they are safely behind a barbed wire fence – as faithfully reproduced in this painting! It must be said that whenever…
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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…
Doodling ... 