Sketch book challenge

Last month I Joined up with the sketch book challenge as I thought it would give some ideas for subjects to keep me going on my personal challenge of a sketch a day, which I've kept up since April last year.

The challenge for this month is close up, so when I was looking back at my photos from Suffolk I remembered this water aid clock that I'd seen on Southwold pier, this is how it looked last summer.



And last week it looked like this.



And I nearly got frostbite in my fingers getting this shot.

So sticking to the challenge I thought I'd crop the image to the details I liked best



......and gave it an ink filter in PS just for fun....... I thought it might help me sort out the shapes, when I sketched it, but it didn't and the sketch eneded up like this.



It was fun to do and made me think differently, so thanks to those at the sketchbook challenge.

New growth

As usual, as soon as Monday comes around the week takes wings again. I did manage to do a little bit of artwork this w\e, but spent a lot of useless time once again trying to load things onto my web site, but as iweb is designed as a fun piece of software the code is inaccessible, so it won't let you put anything on it , like a paypal button.
However I have got my site republished and rejigged, so for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's been down for a about 9 months, you can see my 'other work' here.

I finally finished my bluebell sketch, which turned into a log sketch, as I became totally facinated by it's shape and lost interest in the bluebells.



I was going to work on the cowslip sketch but every time I looked at it I decided that maybe it was enough as it was and I might kill it if I fiddled with it, as that's sooo........ easy to do.



It's been so nice to get back to a bit of sketching practice, but I would like to spend more time on it and gain a bit more skill and confidence.

Over the w\e we went to a local heath that suffered a terrible fire about 2 years ago so I was delighted to see how much eveything had recovered in the meantime, but the scars are still there.



But even in their blackened state the trees make wonderful natural sculptures.



I deliberately underexposed this shot, very daring for me, to try and capture how dramatic this tree looked as we rouded the bend and saw it.



And I had a little help post processing from the 'master' for this one as the sky was really burnt out, but I loved the markings on the bark.



I'm off to my Alice Kettle master class on Saturday, so I'm very excited, I don't know if we'll be discussing our progress with our 'Freedom' project, but it'll be nice to meet half of the other finalists.

Spring fever

As I mentioned in the previous post I had time to do a small sketch of the lake after dinner and have since worked on it. I should have photographed it first to show it just in pen, will do that next time. I'm exploring different media to use in the field at the moment and am trying out some very nice watercolour dual brush pens by Tombow. This web site sells them individually which seems to be unusual. They have a great range of colours and blend really well with a little water. They also work brilliantly with traditional pan watercolours, which is what I've used in this sketch.



Now to the Spring fever bit:
We decided to have breakfast out on Sunday, just for a change, and were lucky enough to pick up some lovely croissants at a local shop on the way to the river. It felt just like being on holiday in France.





We went for a long walk along the river and came across lots of these Kingcups, which I hadn't seen in such profusion since I was a child.

After the river walk we drove around a bit looking for a lake my OH knew of but didn't know where it was, so we had a rather enjoyable magical mystery tour and ended up in this glorious bluebell wood above the elusive lake.





I spent a very happy half hour here sketching some of the bluebells growing by a lovely log, which I shall put up later when I've had time to work on it a bit.



We also managed to steal away on Saturday afternoon to a nature reserve near Winchester which was coverd in cowslips, again a wonderful come back for a flower that was everywhere when I was a child. I sat for an amazing 2 hours on the hill sketching the flowers and working on the lake sketch.

So all in in all it was a pretty good weekend. I hope yours was a good one too.

BYW thank you all for your sympathy re my computer problems, I have to own up that the fault wasn't with Mobile me but with me. My OH discovered that I hadn't sorted out my settings properly oops!!!!!!!