The Lenten Rose Fairy: everybody’s favourite designated driver

Poor poor fairy of the Lenten Rose (Helleborus orientalis). She gets to put on her glad rags right through lent, but, as botanical representative of the season of abstinence, she never gets to have any fun, and by the time lent is done, she’s had her time for another year. Her flowers are really quite something special, but no wonder they hang their heads. So, next time you’re failing in a resolution to give up chocolate / alcohol / cake / Facebook / shaving / being a dick or whatever else your resolution is, just remember that you can go…

Freyja has an exhausting day

Yesterday Freyja had an exhausting day, first she had to lie in the unseasonably warm sun, because who knows when that will happen again. Later she would have to decide which of her water glasses to drink out of. (She has a water glass next to my desk, so that she doesn’t try to drink my paint water). The sketch of fiddlers was from a completely different time and place, but ironically she has also had to put up with listening to sight-reading practice on an actual fiddle. It was hard work for both of us…

Snowdrop Fairies refined (the painting, not the actual fairies!)

I have refined the snowdrop fairy picture, in terms of execution and composition. The fairies themselves are still the twats they were in the original drawing. Had to get this one finished while the flowers were still out, or wait another 11 months for them to flower again. Drawing flowers from photographs is never very effective because you can’t get a feel for their structure, and obviously the fairies do not show up in photographs at all. There have been famous photographs of fairies, but as the Cottingley girls admitted sixty years later, those photographs – belief in which so…

Snowdrop Fairies are twats

So, you complained that I haven’t been drawing enough fairies recently… sorry this is only a very quick sketch but here’s some seasonal ones I spotted, and you have to be quick to catch them: Snowdrop fairies. Do your snowdrops dangle? Chances are that you have a snowdrop fairy infestation. This isn’t the way the flowers are meant to be, it’s because snowdrop fairies are, basically …twats. They like nothing better than to swing on the flowers until all their heads are dangling down. The only way to protect your plants to sneak out by moonlight and spray the plants…

Life drawings

Today I have mostly been life drawing, and I thought it really was about time I put some content up here (most of my artwork ends up on my other site now – http://www.waterdrawn.com). This is Alison, in pencil on paper….

Lizards in action!

The last post on this blog had snow in it, I don’t appear to be keeping up very will here, most of my artwork has been going on my swimming art blog: http://www.waterdrawn.com. However, just when you thought I only paint swimmers… A couple of spelling animal pics I did a couple of months ago for Kylee, who then sent me these fab pictures of the drawings framed and, er, being checked out by one of the household… I design and paint these pictures to order, available in my etsy shop: http://www.nancyfarmer.etsy.com and look for ‘spelling animals’ in the menu.

Bluey-White

Percy is unimpressed. Every hair on his substantial bottom is registering disapproval at the recent turn of events. For one thing, its awful bluey-whiteness is apt to make him look grubby. He is watching it get dark now, and it is still bluey-white. Hopefully by morning the staff will have fixed it…  

200 million years of the inhabitants of Street, Somerset.

They’ve changed a little bit in the intervening years. Mostly there are more bobble hats now. Fragments of fossil, one of many found nearby, with fragments of visitors. As they walked across in front of me, I thought it would be fun to add them to the drawing. From the Sea Dragons of Street exhibition, Alfred Gillett Trust. For more information see this link though the dates there refer to an older showing and the exhibition is also on this week until 5pm today: “19 large ichthyosaur fossils will be on display, as well a selection of smaller fossils found…

The Sunny Windowsill

Right, there have been complaints about a lack of cats on my facebook profile again… So here is yesterday’s sketch. Sarge sleeping on a sunny windowsill. He makes it look easy, but it is actually hard work. One must be constantly vigilant, ever sleeping with half an eye open so as to know when to turn over. Ideally the time to shift position is once he has been half sketched, and before the sketcher has had time to complete the drawing. Freyja meanwhile, her favourite position usurped, has no other choice than to sleep in the paper-feed of the printer*….

Music Studies

In case you thought I only drew swimmers and cats at the moment… you’d be about 95% right. A few recent drawings of musical instruments and people playing music. I use the term in its broadest possible sense as I have included the ringing of church bells*. And last night I saw, heard, and sketched the wonderful ‘Bare Bones’ trombone trio and iSax saxophone quartet. iSax sat down and there wasn’t much to really draw but i did my best, Bare Bones made for a much more lively drawing, though you had to be quick to catch them, and I…