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…

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…

“Sally”

This is Sally, another painting in watercolour, gouache and gold leaf, a celebration of our lovely clear lake at Vobster Quay, where I swim once a week. The source material for this painting was an underwater photograph I took on our first swim of 2017. It was 2nd January. When the lake gets a bit warmer I hope to have a few more subjects not in wetsuits, but for the moment there are a hardcore few of us, though even we have mostly resorted to wearing gloves in these temperatures. The highlights of the water at the top are created…

‘Sara’, with palladium leaf

Second underwater swimmer picture in real paint. I though I wouold try keeping the metallic element but removing the gold colour, so this is palladium leaf. Palladium is very similar to Platinum, but without the latter’s pretensions, and so only costs about the same as gold leaf. This is Sara, also swimming at Vobster Quay.

Cider Apple Fairies

I have finished the Cider Apple Fairies with two days to go, in time to get them into the Somerset Arts Weeks brochure. So that’s me signed up for Arts Weeks (17 September to 2 October 2016), and one more Alternative Flower Fairies picture ticked off. And a decision: next year there shall be a Flower Fairies calendar! I now have 10 Alternative Flower Fairies paintings, just two more needed. I shall also be doing another swimming calendar as this year’s was delightfully popular. So, pictures of the Cider Apple Fairies – after a long line of Poison Flower Fairies…

Painting the Ditch Dragons – step by step

It’s been years since I’ve completed a ‘painting’ in this way, so I took a series of photographs as I painted the Ditch Dragons that I showed you in the previous post. I say ‘painting’ in inverted commas because it is part painting part drawing, and this is probably the main reason I stopped using this technique – I find the classification ‘mixed media’ curiously irritating because it could mean anything at all, and seldom is any further information given. And it slightly offends my purist nature. But it works, and it is a technique I invented for myself, though…

Ditch Dragons

Continuing in my documentation of a Westcountry Bestiary, I am pleased to be able to introduce you to the Ditch Dragons. They are depicted here in their natural habitat on the edge of a country lane in deepest Somerset. For those unfamiliar with my local landscape, the beautiful county of Somerset is, generally speaking, a wet and soggy place, and as such it requires much drainage. The verges along the edge of quiet country lanes are not the solid ground that foreigners may imagine. Take care! Stepping off the road onto the verdant fringe may take one precipitously close to…

The Fairy Barge

I have been doing a lot of painting and rather less updating of the blog lately, getting a collection of paintings together for my Ilminster Exhibition – ‘A Westcountry Bestiary’. Another one I finished early this year and have yet to show you is this: “The Fairy Barge”. Don’t ask where this odd little group sprang from, I couldn’t tell you, I simply started off with the idea of a barge (as in a flat-bottomed boat suitable for shallow waterways) travelling along the drainage ditches and rivers of The Levels. Of course they are not usually spotted, because they are…

Medusa of the Levels

I finished this a couple of weeks ago – a new Medusa picture. This is Medusa of the Levels. To those not acquainted with Somerset, large areas of this county are floodplain, known round here as The Levels since, being flood plain, they are… level. This is a very special and beautiful aspect of the Somerset countryside, and Medusa here is a bit special. Somerset is short on snakes, instead she has worms for hair: because worms are more important than snakes, except to other snakes. In the background is Glastonbury Tor, just in case you failed to realize where…

The Red Tree

New painting, going into the 303 Gallery’s Christmas exhibition next week. The theme was ‘A Walk in the Woods’…I know, it’s a bit Glastonbury, but at the same point there are interesting environmental and horticultural lessons here to be learned about dandelions and why we should be careful about cutting down trees… I’m a fan of Dandelions, and they are good for the soil – but what you see is the mere tip… of the dandelion. This is why they are good for the soil, but of course this is also why they are so very difficult to get rid…