Miniatures Gallery

Some images of my miniatures have been posted earlier in this blog, but I have now started a gallery page (here) to show them in one place.

Flower sketch

A couple of years ago I acquired a packet of nasturtium seeds (a free gift with some magazine, I think).  This spring I decided it was time to use them to fill in a few bare spots in the garden.  In a couple of areas they grew and flowered as expected, but in the third patch they've spread like some monstrous triffid overtaking the lawn and existing plants.  Naturally, they have been the subject of a few sketches.  This one is pen and wash - the colours are nowhere near as vibrant as they should be, but in this instance I was more concerned with capturing their fantastic shapes.

Collage Gallery

I have just added a few of my collage images to the Pages section of this blog.  In due course, I intend to add more categories.

Holiday sketches

A few more drawings from my recent holiday.  These pen and wash sketches are quite tiny as my current watercolour travel journey is only 6" x 4" and I like to use about half the page to write up the day's events.

Petworth House (run by the National Trust) has been home to descendants of the same family for 900 years and contains an impressive collection of art, including works by Gainsborough, Titian, William Blake, Joshua Reynolds, van Dyck and JMW Turner who painted several views of the grounds and the house interior for his patron the 3rd Earl of Egremont.  The house sits in 700 acres of landscaped deer park with a couple of lakes.

Winkworth Arboretum

 The Arboretum is set in a steeply wooded valley leading down to a lake with its boathouse.

Pendean Farmhouse,  originally built in 1609 -
Weald and Downland Museum

This is an open air museum of some 70 acres where over 50 historic local buildings, threatened with demolition, have been painstakingly reconstructed in either a village or rural setting within the site.  A really interesting visit and well worth the full day it took to explore.

Our self-catering accommodation

We stayed in a converted oak-beamed barn on a farm near a small village.

Arundel Castle

We had glorious weather at the end of September when we were on a week's holiday in West Sussex. Arundel Castle was on our list of places to visit and, although we didn't take in the complete Castle tour, the Castle Keep, the 14th Century Chapel and the stunning gardens were enough to keep us occupied for the day.

Arundel Castle - pen and wash

Stone water pump - pen, watercolour and gouache

Arundel Castle

Water feature in the Castle gardens

Castle Gardens

The wild garden

Another circle concertina book

I wanted to try out this book structure for a wedding anniversary greeting.   I made a smaller foam print so my computer-printed message would not be obscured.  The quadrant box was covered with scrunched tissue before being painted.

It's an easy book to make but care is needed to align the sections when sticking them together.  Using the eight pages, I find there is no need for anything to hold the book in its open circular position, but that might not be the case with fewer pages.