Photo's on my Phone 5th of September to 10th of December

 This is a deeply depressing blog post, but it does have a happy ending, I felt I couldn't write about my misery until there was positive news. It's been a long time since my last post as for the past 3 months we have lived in limbo. Every day the same, a constant sense of despair, pointlessness, feeling that we had no future, nothing to do, but stalk the rental sites desperately trying to find a needle in a haystack.

We took the dogs to the beach a lot, the wind and the rain and emptiness fitted our mood.

We searched for a house in Lynton or Lynmouth or even one of the out laying villages, but there was nothing. All the rental houses had been sold for second homes and Airbnb after the pandemic, we've been here for 12 years, moved several times and never had a problem finding somewhere local.

So resigned our selves to the fact we would have to leave our home and community and look further afield.

 

We won second prize for the best allotment for an allotment we have to give up.

We walked on the beach some more, all the time grieving the fact that these things would not be ours anymore.

However leaving was made slightly easier as Daisy had already gone, she and Sam found a beautiful house down a quiet lane in Hele, just outside Ilfracombe.

The flat upstairs was so quiet it felt like part of me was missing.

I drew my "Now house", its A3 drawn in fine line pens, so you can see all the pen strokes, normally I would tidy them up, but to leave it messy fitted my mood.

Sandra and I walked our dogs everyday and as all good friends she listened to my misery.

I finally decided to go to the Drs and was prescribed antidepressants, they made a huge difference, it meant that I didn't burst into tears every time someone asked if we'd found somewhere. They didn't solve the problems, but gave me the impetus to do something proactive. 

So rather than stalking the rental sites finding nothing we wanted, we finally started applying to look at houses.

There weren't many that were suitable, most wouldn't take pets or didn't have a garden or were a top floor flat or most of insulting of all were the short lets of holiday rentals, owners looking to make a bit of money over the winter. We carried on packing and stalking the sites. I soon discovered that agents only show the houses to a few people, so you need to be on the phone as soon as something suitable comes up.

I drew my "Never home", because that's how likely I felt we would find something. In the whole 3 months we only found 3 houses that we would want to live in, we applied for all 3 and were turned down for 2 of them.

BUT we were offered the 3rd one, I still can't believe it's going to be ours, it's a 3 bedroom house with a garden, garage and balcony over looking the sea. 

Even though its perfect it has 2 faults, the first is it isn't in Lynton and the second is it doesn't have a woodturner/open fire.

Its in Combe Martin which is 10 mins drive from Daisy, not too far from Lynton so we can still spend time with our friends.

I can see my house from the beach.

And the beach from my balcony. It means we can walk the dogs on the beach everyday and swim and sun bathe in the summer.

We move in 9 days I still can't believe it's going to be ours, I'm still not sleeping, still feeling anxious, but the emptiness has been replaced with plans for the garden and trying to work out where all the books are going.

The moment I stand on the balcony and look at the sea will be the moment I can relax.

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.

Photo's on my Phone 11th July to 27th July 2024

I don't have many photo's as we've been stuck at home due to all 3 dogs catching kennel cough from one of their dog friend's. 
The boys sailed through, but poor Tinks sounded like she had been smoking 40 a day for a couple of days, they are all better now.

While we were stuck at home the big boy's watched a football match.

While Mummy and Maggie pulled stupid faces.

We left the dogs at home for the Lynmouth Regatta, luckily the torrential rain that was forecast didn't happen, so much beer and laughter was enjoyed. 

The highlight of the regatta is always the seagull race, which involves running across the foot bridge with an outboard motor, attaching it to your dinghy, starting it, racing around the first post past the harbour wall while trying to keep the motor running.

Many fail at starting the motor bit, much to the amusement of the crowd who shout encouragement from the footbridge.

Our first trip out with the dog's when they had all recovered was to Braunton Burrow's, we all love the Burrows which is a vast area of giant sand dunes. 

This trip was very eventful, Ron disappeared chasing rabbits and didn't come back, Phil had to search for him while I put the other 2 on their leads (as we didn't want to lose them too) and looked in the opposite direction. Eventually Ron was captured and put on his lead, as we walked back to the car Tinks disappeared into a hedge and came back covered in fox poo, it was dripping off her collar, all over her head and back.

I dunked her in a very shallow muddy puddle to get the worst off, then Phil rubbed her down with handfuls of grass, we travelled home with all the car windows open!

And after 2+ weeks of quarantine Siri was finally reunited with his girlfriend (and hogged all the balls).

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.