Stones

Stones.

Triptych.

Oil on gesso board.

Wet glistening stones, tumbled and soaked by cold water hurrying down to meet the sea.  Low sunlight catches the stones and glistens on the wet sand like treasure, a handful of diamonds cast to the sand, a river of silver towards the sea.

For more ramblings about this painting please visit Watermarks.

Sky, Sky, Sky and Daffodils

Sky, Sky, Sky and Daffodils.

Watercolour & Pen

Tiny Moleskine sketchbook

The Daffodil fields are being worked, the yellow heads of these lovely heralds of spring and dotting the somber winter landscape. Hunched figures in the fields, like a medieval book of hours, pick and bunch them by hand. It is terrible work, cold, badly paid, miserable. Twenty six years ago I did a daffodil season. Yesterday I found the little sketchbook that I kept, you can see the miserable record of a daffodil girl on this slide show. Also you can see how valuable sketchbooks are. No photograph would have remembered the slavery of fieldworkers in quite the same way, the sketchbook cost me 25p and for a weeks backbreaking work I got £33.98p and at the end of it all I painted a large painting called "Remembering Thomas Tallis in the Daffodil Fields" I have no idea where the title came from unless I spent my time humming Miserere Nostri, under grey skies, to go with the medieval atmosphere!

Fishing

Fishing

Moleskine Sketchbook

Watercolour, Pen, Pencil.

Dark cliffs full of colours, if I hadn't stopped and watched I would have written them off as a dark and gloomy grey but look longer, give it time and the colours gush out.  Deep reds, interesting greens, blackest blues and bruises of purple.  Interesting and complicated.  Don't judge a book by its cover, don't judge a cliff by the weather, linger longer, ask questions, dig a bit deeper.

Moleskinnery

Way Hay...I won a Moleskine

The lovely folk from Simply Moleskine will post a little thing up on their website today or tomorrow in the me and my moleskine section. And, best of all, they will post me a large watercolour moleskine sketchbook as my prize.

I don't win things very often so I am very pleased and here is a celebratory slide show of recent Moleskinnery.