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Robins
These friendly visitors to our gardens are such a welcome sight in winter. With their orange-red breasts and joyful song, they really lighten the darker days. Long associated with Christmas, it’s the perfect time to take a closer look at…
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All 100 Luminance Pencils
After discovering that Caran D’Ache’s Luminance pencils were the perfect fit for my drawing style two years ago, I’ve been gradually building up my collection. Last week, I took delivery of the final pencils I needed to complete the full…
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Saucer Sketches: Greens and Blues
Some of my favourite watercolours are in the green and blue range so I had great fun with this week’s quick sketch. I was going to draw another scene, but as I sketched the curves that I wanted the hills…
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Saucer Sketches: Muted Watercolours
This time of year is great for picking up some extra art supplies as there are so many offers for Black Friday week, the run up to Christmas and during the New Year sales. It can be difficult to know…
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The Greylag Goose in the Isle of Man
Several species of geese can be found in the wild in the Isle of Man. Some are migratory visitors, whereas others are present year round. The picture is often confused by feral, previously domesticated, birds being seen alongside those that…
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Travel Sketching and Christmas Fairs
I had a wonderful time away at a family wedding last weekend, and took my ‘Colours of Nature’ travel palette with me in case I had a chance to sketch during the trip. The weather was very grey but the…
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Colours of Nature: Palette Creation
Among the colours featured in the book ‘Nature’s Palette’ by Thames and Hudson, there are several that are described as ‘characteristic colours’ as they are used as reference points to describe other colours. As I’m going on a short trip…
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The Migrant Hawker
Dragonflies are the most mesmerising of insects. To me, they always seem too big, too beautiful and too alien to be real when seen flying or hovering nearby. I guess one of the reasons they look so alien to me…
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Corvid Celebration
With Hop-tu-Naa on the way and the WildTober drawing prompts this week featuring ‘corvid’, I just had to feature these wonderful birds on the blog. The Isle of Man is lucky enough to be home to a variety of corvid…
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Turning Autumn Leaves into Cards
With the Autumn Leaves in Ink workshop coming up, I’ve been creating lots of leaf ink drawings to show as examples and to test out different colour combinations of ink. While doing this, it occurred to me that these leaves…