SILVER BIRCH BARK

 

Silver birch is my favourite tree and when I saw a piece of the bark on the ground in the woods as we walked to the port one day I had to pick it up to bring home to draw.  I left it for a few days for it to dry and for the bugs to crawl away and then got to work first with a fine pen and then my favourite coloured pencils in my home made sketchbook.

SUMMER SEED PODS

 

I took a stroll around my garden and gathered a few seed pods, I love the pale blue green of the poppies and the pink edges of the sycamore wings.

 

The nigella seed pods are a delight with their feathery leaves and lime and maroon seed heads.

CANDLES IN THE WOODS

 

In our part of the world one of the native wild flowers is the Navelwort, which starts growing it's round leaves with a navel in the centre early in the year.  In late spring the flowers appear and as it prefers the damp shady soil in the woods they flourish and seem to last for ages.  We see them everywhere on our walks, especially as we favour the cool places during the summer and I was reminded of candles as they glowed in the fresh greenness.  I sketched this yesterday in memory of my sister whose birthday it would have been.

HUNGRY DUCKS

 

We've just spent a week in a log cabin in Surrey, England.  There was a pond on the site with several families of mallards who came every day to beg for food.  The tiny ducklings were so adorable but moved so quickly, following their mother, that I had to copy their markings from the photos I took to be able to colour my sketches!

PEBBLES ON THE BEACH

 

The beaches on Tenerife are dark grey volcanic sand with large pebbles at the top and along the outcrops into the water.  In one area the whole beach was covered in these stacks and I enjoyed watching children running around collecting different sizes to make their own piles.  Luckily the tides didn't come far enough up the beach to topple them!

MORE TENERIFE PALMS

 

I've got some wild paper colours in my new sketchbook and this raspberry pink is quite gorgeous. Don't you just love the contrast with the orange!

TENERIFE PALMS

 

We've just come back from a fortnight in Tenerife and having gone for a lazy time in the sun I decided to draw the palm trees in the gardens while relaxing on my sunbed!  These Derwent line painters are great on the tinted paper in my sketchbook but I think the heat had an unfortunate effect on them and caused a bit of 'blobbing' which I had to rescue with my waterbrush by spreading it further across the paper.