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….

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…

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…

Nudity!

I spent Saturday drawing naked people again. Life drawing is really excellent practice, but does mean that I end up with a lot of drawings, and not everyone wants naked people on their walls… however since, curiously, ‘nude pencil drawing’ is one of the most commonly used search terms for people finding my shop for original artwork on on Etsy.com, there must be some people out there who do. And some of these drawings I’m quite pleased with, so I’ve just put a few up in the shop here. This is not the same shop as the one with all…

Sketching Cider Apple Fairies

I have been Drawing Cider Apple Fairies! The sketch is now as complete as it’s going to get, next stage is to get it onto watercolour paper and get the paints out. This was done on a tablet – not as nice to draw on as paper but what it loses in tactile pleasure it more than makes up for in the ability to move and alter different elements of the drawing until they work together. You can’t see much of this process here, but there was a lot of faffing at the start once I had a pose for…

Ditch Dragons and the Westcountry Bestiary

A quick update: I have written and sent the blurb for my solo exibition at Ilminster in July, it is now definitely called ‘A Westcountry Bestiary’. So I need to steam ahead a bit and paint a few more creatures, beasties and denizens of the Westcountry.  This evening I am drawing Ditch Dragons. They are a thing, honest. Medusa is finished, and when I have time to stitch the scans together I shall post her but for the meantime, it’s dragons in the undergrowth…  

Papaver Somniferum

There are gaping holes in my ‘Poison Flower Fairies‘ painting series. This suspicious selection of characters so far includes some toxic, medicinal and aggressive types of fairies, but I have yet to add two blindingly obvious ones. One of the omissions is Atropa Belladonna, a.k.a Deadly Nightshade, both notorious and medicinal, and this is partly because I don’t know anywhere hereabouts where it grows though it must be somewhere around, and I do like to draw a plant from life even if it’s sometimes hard to track down the fairies. The other one is almost so obvious you wouldn’t believe…

A spot of Life Drawing

Life drawing today, and I hardly ever get round to posting the results on the blog, so here they are, plus a couple from the last time I managed to make it to a session. The medium is pencil, with a little pastel applied with a cotton bud.