tropical
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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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Tropical Beach
Loosely based on a photo taken on Mirissa Beach in Sri Lanka, here is another experiment using watercolours and quite a lot of water. Once again my first attempt was too wet, meaning that the background trees grew enormous as they spread over most of the sky! This second version was closer to damp rather…
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Roadside Banana
I have had a banana plant growing indoors in a pot for well over twenty years. Although it has continued to produce new leaves, in all that time it has only managed to grow to about half a metre in height! By contrast, throughout South-East Asia we saw these plants grown to many metres in…
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Marina Bay Sands – Singapore
This is quite a building! They only finished constructing it in 2010 but already it seems to be quite an icon for Signapore, which just maybe was the idea when it was built. I have heard it described as a (cricket) wicket, which accurately summarises the basic shape of the structure, but somehow misses out…
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Red Ginger
The Botanic Gardens in Singapore have many dazzling flowers on display. This particular Red Ginger (apparently also called Alpina purpurata, Ostrich Plume and Pink Cone Ginger) caught my eye, and I have only slightly exaggerated the colour of the petals in this painting. I used the Procreate app running on an iPad to “paint” this…
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Lisu Lodge, Mae Taeng – Pond Cartoon
For some reason the flora in northern Thailand put me in mind of Herve’s Tintin. I’m not even sure that Tintin ever had a jungle adventure, although it wouldn’t surprise me if he did. Anyway, this view in particular seemed to cry out to be drawn as a comic book scene in which an adventure…
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Lisu Lodge, Mae Taeng – Balcony Sketch
In Thailand we were lucky enough to spend a few nights in an amazing hill tribe village. The buildings were to all appearances very traditional, but also very comfortable and not at all lacking in mod-cons, so perhaps they were more “traditional” than traditional. Anyway, the bamboo building we were staying in had a large…






