Drawings
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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…
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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…
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Goðafoss
Iceland has several magnificent waterfalls, many with equally impressive names. The name Goðafoss is often translated as “waterfall of the gods” and the view across it is certainly awe-inspiring. In the summer you might reasonably expect to see this fall illuminated by bright sunshine, but on our visit the sky was a leaden grey which…
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Raindrops
The way that raindrops play with light is fascinating and, if you can remember from physics how lenses work, not too difficult to understand. This picture is simply an attempt to get the rain-on-glass effect to look realistic. The rather blurry background to the scene is actually Iceland, a place that provides all sorts of…
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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…
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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…
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A Fresh Face
I always feel that drawing a face presents a type of double jeapody. Not only is there an expectation that the face will look real, there is often an equally strong requirement that the drawing actually looks like the person being drawn! This desire for a convincing likeness makes drawing well know personalities particularly challenging,…
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Rambling Rose
We bought this rose at a local garden fete, with a warning from the stall holder that this plant was “a bit of a thug”! I think it is a “Rambling Rector” – a variety more formally described as having “very vigorous growth” and as being “very thorny”. At the moment I drew this rose…
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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…
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Daffodil
Anyone remember the Spring of 2020? There were daffodils around of course, but there was also a deadly new disease apparently running rampant around the world. This particular flower was drawn a few days before we were all “locked down”, but at a time when we were already becoming wary of getting too close to…
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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 ... 