Sketches

  • Artists Mannequin

    I realise that these things exist primarily to improve drawings of real people. They are supposed to guide an artist to help get the right body proportions and realistic limb positions of any people in a scene. However, when they are set up in an action position (such as this one in a running pose…

    Artists Mannequin
  • 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…

    Drawing Room
  • 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…

    New Boots
  • 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,…

    A Fresh Face
  • 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…

    Rambling Rose
  • 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.

    Lilies
  • A Bridge Over The River Kwai

    No – this is not THAT bridge! The original bridge was both built at enormous cost to the prisoners conscripted to construct it and then destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. This bridge was built after the war, but of course is now often visited by those coming to understand and pay tribute…

    A Bridge Over The River Kwai