In my own yard

sketchercise from last week, a photo by vickylw on Flickr.

These are painted these grape hyacinths with gouache w/o pencil or ink first. The background wash was done before leaving the house, using thin watercolor.

This and the sketches below were done after taking Ceilidh, my new puppy, on one of our small daily "walkabouts" --- she is slowly getting the hang of walking on a lead. I'm looking forward to longer walks with her, but until her third shot we are avoiding other dog's areas.

And this is what happens to the 7 wild tulips in our yard every year. We may dig them up this time and place them closer to the building. ("wild" in that we didn't plant them -- they are placed very irregularly in the side yard --- they have unusually short stems of only a couple of inches.)

Little Egret

Little Egrets.
20 years ago these were an incredibly rare bird in Ireland.Since then they have expanded naturally from their European range into the UK and Ireland and are now a common breeding bird in many places, including my area. This was an exploratory sketch for the cover of "The Cork Bird Report" a couple of years ago.

Bar Tailed Godwit.

A common winter visitor to Ireland from its breeding grounds in northern europe, these brds nmally arrivearound September and stay until early spring.