Bradgate Park is within a volcanic stone’s throw of the East Midlands city of Leicester. The area of Charnwood Forest, in which the park lies, contains “some of the oldest rocks in England according to the British Geological Survey web site (I’m guessing that Scotland…
Continue reading Precipice
Two of the many ancient oaks in Bradgate Park, in Leicester, looking all grizzled and wise against the January wreckage of the bracken. I fancied that they were having a discussion on some suitably serious oaky topic. The orange of the bracken balances the cool…
Continue reading Elder Statesmen
A few years back, I established a little tradition of painting the bluebells en plein air. They were usually my first plein air piece for the year, as their appearance coincides with the warmer weather. What with one thing and another, and Open Studios happening…
Continue reading The Bluebells Were Almost Over
It’s always rather sad to discover a dead creature. This bee, which looks like a buff-tailed bumblebee queen, expired in our house and when I found it, I decided to draw it. I used a magnifying lamp, but very little, if any part, of my…
Continue reading Queen Bee
This is based on a fairly old photograph from 2018, albeit of a place I know well and visit often. There is a distinct blue cast in that photograph that I found attractive, but it was difficult to reconcile the blue-green of the trees with…
Continue reading Effervescent
This is based on a photograph that I took on a walk in east Hampshire which included two bridleways called Standfast Lane and Mill Lane. I can’t remember which lane I took the photograph on , but it doesn’t really matter because Standfast is a…
Continue reading Standfast
This is another scene from my walk in the Shropshire hills in January. The wall alongside the track I was following had fallen into disrepair some time ago, and had been populated by holly, rowan and oak. This was near the top of the Stiper…
Continue reading Trees on a Dry Stone Wall
This shows rowan trees atop a tumbledown dry stone wall at Brook Vessons nature reserve in Shropshire. The location, which I visited in January and would like to return to in a milder month, is part of a derelict hillside mining village abandoned in the…
Continue reading Winter Bank
A nascent sunken lane running alongside the much deeper Hartley Mauditt Lane (featured in MultiStorey and Mauditt). The group of trees to the right are also shown, from a different angle, in Undertow. Summit, Ink on kaolin-coated board, 12 x16″
Exposed tree roots on the sheer side of a greensand holloway in Surrey. Moss Walk, Ink on kaolin-coated board, 14×11″