Photo's on my Phone 23rd August 2024 to 4th of September

What do you do when your life is collapsing around you?

Go on holiday and forget it all for a few days!

So we went back to Suffolk to see our families and cuddle my boy and his husband.

We also spent time with both of our parents, Phil's nephew, sister & brother & my aunt, 

We were only gone 72 hours, but in that time we drove 16 hours, slept for 14 hours.

Visited 3 pubs (including The Jolly Sailor at Orford as seen in the photo above)

Visited 2 beaches, Walberswick  above where a stone/tooth/finger incident occurred.

Plus 5 hours in casualty, there was an incident with a stone, Siri's mouth and Phil's finger. Siri ended up with a chipped canine that sliced Phil's finger badly enough to need stitches. 

Moral of the story is always make sure Siri is sitting in front of you and waiting before you throw anything.

We both waited patiently outside for 5 hours while Phil waited patiently inside, only to be told they couldn't stitch his finger because it was an animal injury.

Beach number 2 was Shingle Street (our old home). You can almost see our old house in the trees across the marshes

And then we drove home, luckily the 18 mile traffic jam was on the other side of the M25.

On Sunday it was Bert's 7th birthday, his 2 uncles gave him an iguana and great Grandad gave him a remote controlled model boat.

The iguana ate fish & chips with us on Ilfracombe harbour beach and the model boat in the words of Bert is the best present in the world.

Now I'm back to the depressing job of packing our lives in boxes, while we desperately try and find somewhere to live.

No drawings last week except for a couple of badly drawn quick sketches, however I will be at the Lyn Valley Market at Lynton Town Hall on Saturday. 

Please come and say Hi, but please no sympathy unless you want a flood of tears.

Photo's on my Phone 28th July to 6th August 2024

Seems like ages since my last post, but it was only a week ago.

The sun has finally come out so the day's have been warm and fuzzy.

Ron didn't want to play ball anymore so he refused to move and forced his master to carry him. It was early evening and even though the temperature had gone down he still exhausted himself. This was after 5 mins of play, trouble is he runs a million miles an hour so gets tired really quickly. So no more ball play for Ron until it gets a lot cooler.

We went to lots of beaches. 

This is Woolacombe, in between swimming and playing football the boys pretended to be really cool, all Queenie and Grandpa wanted to do was lay in the sun and read their books, but alas caring for two small boys makes it impossible.

In between swimming and shouting at small boys to try and stop them kicking balls at people I did a sketch, which I'm not terribly happy. The tents were supposed to look like jelly fish and the jelly fish tentacles to look like the sea. I shouldn't have added the parasols, but I quite like the people, I added the spots to make it better, but instead I've made it worse. Sometimes things aren't meant to be.

The dogs re-enacted a photo taken about 9 years ago, only Tinks remains of the original 3. Siri has replaced Loki and Ron has replaced Billy, which is ironic because Ron hates cat's. I wish I still had a Billy, he was the best cat ever, but sadly we will have to wait until Ron has gone, fingers crossed it's a very long time. I will wait for another Billy in the same way I will wait for another Land Rover.

Our next beach trip was to Blacklands which is our local beach at the bottom of the hill,  it's a huge contrast  to Woolacombe. We did more swimming and I attempted to do more reading, I might of managed a page or two. I hate photo's of me, but this one is ok, its me & my small boys at home in my happy place.

Yesterday's beach was Crow point, no swimming as the tide was out, but plenty of sand, most of it is in still in my hair and sketch book! A little bit more relaxing as the boy's played on the big sand dune, which is on its own and means they can't disappear into the Burrows like rabbits never to be found again.

My Crow Point sketch is just a pencil sketch, I will work over it in fine line pen.

I've finished my first colouring of the ghost of Hollerday House, it's interesting to see how the colour changes the image. I love it and have already started on the next coloured print, the coloured Hollerday House will be available to buy as soon as I've worked out how much to charge. If you are interested please let me know.

I'm still working on the digital version of Summer, I can't wait to start colouring, but it will probably be digital colouring as the A1 print will be far too big.

Drawing for me

Looking through my photo's I realised that last year was the year I drew for everyone else but me. 

I wanted (and needed) to sell prints, due to the recession which has shrunk all my income streams into a trickle.

I thought that if I drew what I thought people would like to buy that the prints would sell, but I hadn't considered that just because you like something it doesn't mean you are going to buy it.

I also drew for the people who said "I'd love to see a drawing of my building/shop/house etc etc" at the time I considered this was an intent to buy, but it wasn't. It was exactly what they said, "I would love to see.." not "I would like to buy.."

Over the last year attending fairs & markets numerous people commented that their house wasn't on one of my drawings, so they wouldn't buy it, but if I did a drawing that included their house that they would buy a print.

Over the past few weeks I have been considering starting several new drawings that would include all the missing houses, I even printed several photo's to use as inspiration, but I haven't been inspired enough to put pen to paper.

I think life is telling me to draw for me, so I'm rewinding, hoping I'll get back to here or some place similar.

At present I have a block about starting something and getting it wrong, so Iam colouring and altering prints that don't sell.

At the moment I'm working on Hollerday House

Which started off as this.

The coloured version is a bit of a mess, as I'm still trying to find the right pens to use, there are a few places where the markers have bled over the line or tiny spots of colour when the acrylic pen decided to leak, but on the whole I'm very happy and enjoying every minute of it.

At the moment my guilty pleasure is looking at pens on-line trying to find the perfect one to colour prints, a few have accidentally ended up in the post on their way to me 😁

Experiments & other stuff

Not only have I finished Ilfracombe , but I've also finished Woolacombe.

I quite like it, but got carried away with acrylic pen and have over worked it. I was going to have it framed so I could exhibit it, but I'm not sure its worth it, so I'll find/make a mount and sell it as it is.

After finishing a major project I always feel a bit lost, so this weekend I've been playing until inspiration strikes. I decided I needed to tackle my Verona green sketchbook, the paper is beautiful, but the green dulls the colours and colour is my thing, so I've struggled to use it. I decided to experiment with different mediums, the first was Posca acrylic pens (one of my favourites) and think I don't need to look any further they are perfect, the colours are luminous.

The drawing on the right is drawn with a 0.003 pen and coloured with a 0.5 pen, it would be nice if I could perfect combining the two pens. 

 

I follow the artist  Niamh Moran on Instagram she works over her prints, adding more colour and detail, so each print is individual. As I've got several prints that don't sell I thought I'd experiment.

This is the First quarter of Summer, I've used several different mediums trying to find one that works. I used fine line felt pens, marker pens, coloured pencils and finally acrylic pens. Fine line pens are too dark, the paper is porous so the markers bleed, my pencils are too soft, I struggle to keep them within the lines, but yet again the acrylic pens are perfect.

Experimenting with Summer has led me to look at it again.

Summer started as a drawing of all the places we had visited with our grand boys in the school summer holidays in 2022.

The original has orange juice and dog foot prints all over it thanks to my then very large bouncy puppy, so I knew I could never sell it, so I put it into photoshop and started drawing over it. In the autumn of 2022 I started drawing Lynton and abandoned Summer. At that time I had only drawn the top half, so I cut it into 2 pieces to sell as quarters of Summer.

I had several prints of the First quarter of Summer, but as it wasn't popular I never bothered having the second quarter printed.

At some point in time I coloured the first quarter in digitally, which I love. I only have one copy, which is framed and has been shown at my Exmoor Parks exhibition.

I loved the colour version so much that I want to colour the whole drawing, unfortunately I can't find the original the digital progress image, plus the two quarters didn't match up as I'd redrawn the edges where they met.

So I've started the digital drawing again. The above is what I have drawn so far, the cream background is just to give an idea of how big it is.

I have visions of an A1 coloured version, framed on my wall and maybe a plan of where to submit it if I finish it in time.

And lastly I have a new sketchbook, which I'm so excited about, it's a A5 concertina sketchbook. I will be able to draw one page at a time and slightly overlap onto the next page, enabling all the drawings to become one large image.

I'm so excited I can't wait for it to stop raining so I can find something to draw in it.

Landscape

Landscapes have always been my thing and so living at the end of the road is perfect for me. 

I like the wild best of all, I think that's why I have a strong affinity to the sea. I've lived within 10 miles of the coast all my life, I've spent the last 30 years with the sea almost on my door step. I can't imagine what it would be like to live inland.

I spent most of my early life surrounded by fields, woods and marshes, I still live very close to nature except I've swapped the fields & marshes for moorland and hills, so these are the things I draw.

I like to have a personal connection to the places I draw, that's why I draw my little corner of Exmoor. 

I don't feel I could draw somewhere else unless I have been there, but even then I feel slightly guilty for stealing someone else's landscape.

The view from the allotment is spectacular, across Lynmouth Bay to South Wales, on a clear day you can see the mountains and wind farms on the coast, this year we haven't had many clear days, but it was very clear on Sunday when we were at the allotment. I've never drawn this view, but the clouds are so amazing in this photo that I'm considering it. 

This is the view sideways to the east, the white building in the middle is The Blue ball pub, the white blur further up is camper vans in the car park we use when walking on Countisbury.

As I'd photographed The Blue Ball from the allotment I thought it was only right to photograph the allotment from the Blue Ball. You can just make them out in the second photo, to the left of the houses, behind the row of bungalows.

I'm not sure whether I will draw these views, but I like the fact they are connected.

Below are some of my other favourite local landscapes all within 5 mins from my front door.

Ilkerton Ridge which I have drawn several times and will probably draw again.

Holdstone Down, which I plan to draw next, maybe .....

Lynton & Lynmouth from Countisbury Hill, I love how this view illustrates just how remote we are. If I ever draw it I would need to draw on at least A2 size paper as I have a compulsion to draw all the buildings in the right places. Maybe it will need several sheets of paper and more photographs using a very good camera!

Park Gardens from Hollerday Hill, the angle is wrong, Park Gardens goes up hill to the right, but I photographed from it from the snowball path walking up hill to the left. I will have to alter the angle before I draw it.

There are so many more amazing views, almost every direction I look. When I decided I needed to appeal to a wider audience I decided I needed to leave Lynton and draw landscapes further afield, but as I've chosen to draw for me I can continue drawing my landscape without any guilt.