Recent Sketches…
14 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
… Just focussing on quickly drawing shapes with this one…
Tracey’s Kitten moving about – each pose was held for just a couple of seconds before the little kitten became restless and moved about…
Budgies and Spud… thinking about negative space, and overall shapes…
January 2012… one of the pages in my new Sketchpad…
10 mins, watercolour sketch of the view from a window in a cafe in Blackpool…
Blackpool Beach Watercolour Roughs and a Blackpool Sunset…
03 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
This was a little watercolour sketch of the sunset this evening… it was very interesting because the deep red was obscured by cloud. It’s been quite breezy so the view was changing very quickly as I painted the colours… a bit of an experiment. It’s good fun to try to capture the colours in the sky as it changes.
Here’s a little scrappy watercolour experiment in preparation for a recent painting of Blackpool beach… this is watercolour rough no.1 which I felt was too measured and included too much instead of focussing on what I perceive when I look at a scene I like… I don’t think we see literally; like a camera lens with every detail; I think we see what we want to see – focus on what interests us, holds a memory, reminds us of something… I wanted to try to include what interests me in the scene which was quite difficult … it’s easier to include everything…. and far too much.
So here’s watercolour rough number 2, trying again to focus on what I actually focussed on the day I saw the beach and really liked the view in front of me… I was happy with less detail in this one… I didn’t bother with detail on the tower…. it’s not the right shape…neither is the pier… I just wanted to simplify the image into the elements that interest me…
So this is watercolour rough number 3 and I felt I was starting to get there, starting to emphasise what I wanted to paint and leave out what I didn’t want to paint…
Recent Watercolour Sketches…
06 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
This is a little watercolour sketch of a small Jack Russell I met a couple of days back… it’s a watercolour I created using all of my initial observational watercolour sketches as reference… ‘Alphie Pauses’
Earlier in the day I visited my brother and sketched him quickly with watercolour as he sat in the sun ‘Jack in the Sunshine’ -
Here are a couple of experiments I created before painting Lac Du Chambon on some stretched watercolour paper – these are quite small…
Finally here’s a little observational watercolour sketch of Avebury Stone circle – I painted this whilst sitting on the high bank overlooking the circle.
Recent Sketches
05 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
Flowers…
Animals at Blackpool Zoo (drawn with biro – I’d forgotten my drawing pencils, my drawing pen, or my watercolours… I quite like drawing with Biro now!)
A relative’s cat when it paused in the room …
Two pet budgies…
Sunshine, Steam train rides, Starlings and Goldfish
05 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
Very quick watercolour of some summer flowers in the garden…
….Goldfish in the tiny pond…
… extremely quick drawings from the views from the window of a steam train ride from Ravenglass in the Lake District
Sunshine and Starlings…
Some of my Sketches from April 2011
25 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
… there are plenty more in my sketchpad – these are just a selection – my sketchpad has many uses – sometimes I need to decide on colours for a final illustration, sometimes I sketch people, sometimes I try to sketch with watercolour and no pencil – so any mistakes are there immediately, which makes it a very immediate method – very honest – it either works or it doesn’t!
I also use my sketchpad to draw thumbnails, plan out illustrations, plan out personal pieces of work, plan for paintings, book ideas, logo ideas, experiements and so forth… it’s an essential tool for my work.
Recent sketches
15 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
Observational watercolour sketch of the view from Cobble Hey Farm and Gardens
it’s absolutely lovely, well worth a visit.
A little patient being patient:
Observational line drawings of garden plants: 
Recent Sketchpad entries and quick watercolours…
16 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
Unusual Building at Lytham Hall…
Ian…
Quick watercolour tree…
This was an interesting day… I sat with my daughter and we started sketching South Pier, Blackpool, and then there was a very loud noise from a helicopter and it actually landed on the beach… while we were sketching! I think it was giving people helicopter lessons! wouldn’t like to see that risk assessment…. the mark under the Sea Gulls is where the piece of paper got scooped out of my hand by the wind and landed on the floor!
