no images were found

Prints made either side of the SWLA exhibition PV on wednesday … easy to be thrown completely by seeing other peoples work but figuring best to try and hold the line.

no images were found

More of the same… the approach is covering a perspex sheet with ink and then taking out negative shapes using different sizes of blade. Equivalent to using the gouge with a woodcut but a lot quicker/more direct.
I try to let things happen and let the early blocky shapes, that would be hard to read for an onlooker, dictate what happens next.
My aim is to leave more empty space but my tendency is always to fill the container…

Working a bit more directly from recent field sketching experiences from chew valley lake and slimbridge.  At Chew familiar inhabitants of the same bay… familiar inhabitants of 40 odd years and feeling I should know them better… At Slimbridge looking at the captive birds, or at least very close up visitors, feels more like human life drawing… and something refreshing in that…
The wild birds rendered relatively 2D when they are off in the distance, even when looked at through the telescope. When they are down around the kneecaps and you’re looking across their width/depth it is a different picture.
That alongside weighing up the virtues of monoprint vs. woodcut and so far monoprint is winning… partly because when its done its done… with the woodcut there is still the possibility of meddling.

no images were found

3 interpretation board images recently completed for Glamorgan County Council. These will be sited at Rhoose Point nature reserve, the southernmost tip of South Wales.

Lane packed with fruit, sloes like small plums. Dogwood and haws as dense as I’ve ever seen them. Blackcaps and phylloscopus warblers nipping back and forth. A young bullfinch with drooling beak. Speckled woods the commonest butterfly with the odd small copper.
In the bay I’d come mainly just to enjoy sketching the common species. Heron wading up to its hips.  I missed the catch, just seeing a large dark brown fish disappearing down its throat. It then flapped off to a quiet corner to digest.
More than 20 Moorhens again… mostly gathered in small groups.
Later on a group of lapwings coming in and dispersing round the perimeter. Re-realising that one of the pleasures of drawing birds is trying to depict the way they unpack themselves into radically different forms.Then furling themselves back into a sleek, compact whole.

Late afternoon visit to reservoir. End of summer sense, hardly any butterflies left and only the odd migrant hawker.
Bay with wheedling young, zebra striped great-crested grebe. Water level low, lots of moorhens, at least 25 around the perimeter of this one bay. Lapwings, some hunched along a rocky bank along way from the water.
3 herons distributed widely along the shore and 1 little egret in the shallows.
The reed heads changing from their mauve, dark chocolate to something more worn brown.
Flowering water mint covered with flies and a single small copper.
A tawny owl male calling and finding it very well hidden high in a scots pine.

Picking up unsold work from Muchelney pottery exhibition and stopping on the levels for sketching.
Very foggy when I arrived. Focussing on the waders on the drained lagoon.

Hard to capture the subtleties of ruff… the females sticking close to the shoreline or picking around on the island. The males out in deep water with lengthened necks and downward, snouty gaze.
Snipe probing away on the shore.
Exotic great white egrets, osprey.
The other side of the poldens, a buddleia covered with green veined white butterflies, also one purple loosestrife a mass of flapping white wings.
Hobbies soaring with a sparrowhawk above High Ham… more hobbies back at Shapwick but I kept my sketching focus on the waders trying to get back up to speed and start to see new things in more’ish species.

no images were found

A bush full of small tortoiseshells, probably 30 or so there. Lots of whites too. Single clouded yellow, painted lady, peacock, comma and a very worn silver-washed fritillary.
Nearby in the scrubby undergrowth blues were flitting around and an egg laying brown argus.
Plenty of dragonflies but surprisingly few darters. I didn’t really check the hawkers to see who was who.
Roe deer in very red summer coats.

Mint swarming with hoverflies. The odd small copper too… The meadow looked as if it was mowed some time ago so they’ve lost a lot of their feeding territory for this year.

In the bay, garganey, a common sandpiper, around 20 lapwings, lots of loafing moulting dabbling ducks.
Heron catching a small roach type fish

no images were found

no images were found

This year has been even worse than usual for keeping up the blog. My father had been ill for quite some time and he died in late July. My brother has been staying with us during his decline which has kept us preoccupied.