I have just spent a wonderful week on the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, walking, watching, drawing and absorbing the rhythm of life on the island. Predictably the weather was changeable and there were moments of battling the wind as paper and drawing board threatened to blow away or having to dry out a sodden sketchbook by the stove. But it meant seeing so many different facets of the island as sea spume swirled around the cliffs at Altarstanes Harbour, the magical appearance of vast numbers of puffins from the gloom of a murky morning or shags preening and glistening in the sunshine.
More to come soon!
I had a fabulous day out drawing the Black Spout waterfalls at Pitlochry last week. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, it was actually warm enough that my hands didn't go blue working without gloves on! Here are a couple of the drawings, really enjoying the play of light on still pools or foaming, rushing torrents and some lovely rock forms.
A few quick sketches from my travels around Dumfries and Galloway on a glorious frosty and sunny morning in February.
And drawings in ink of some fantastic tree forms. I really enjoyed getting back to basics making these, restricting myself to working purely in black and white with one brush and a twig. Its always a pleasure spending a few hours outside, getting completely absorbed in a subject and thinking of nothing else but what the next mark will be.
One of my India inspired watercolours 'Sabzi Bazaar' has just been accepted to the RI show at Mall Galleries, London and will be on show there from 6th-16th April 2016.
http://www.mallgalleries.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/royal-institute-painters-water-colours-2016
The piece began life as a selection of sketchbook images which I had been working up using different printmaking techniques and as a by-product, had lots of lovely scraps of brightly coloured and textured papers. They resolved themselves into an image formed around two women who I drew at a vegetable bazaar in Udaipur. A huge basket of luscious papaya and other equally vibrant fruit and vegetables in the foreground vied for brilliance with the womens shimmering saris. As usual the setting was a confusing backdrop of awnings, parasols, doorways, peeling paintwork, signs and small shrines.
This year has brought an exciting new project which will be taking me on a number of drawing trips around Dumfries and Galloway, an area I've often travelled through but never before had the pleasure to stop and explore. So far I've travelled most of the length of the Solway coastline, pausing to draw subjects along the way ranging from the Barnacle Geese at Caerlaverock to the Mull of Galloway lighthouse.
Also recently completed are two new sets of linocuts based on some wildlife drawing made in the autumn.
A recent collagraph I've been working on after spending many happy hours watching the cormorants and gannets diving off Waternish Point on Skye earlier this year. This is a working proof yet to be editioned but I think its just about ready to go. I really love those rich, velvety blacks full of texture which collagraph can achieve.
And some fresh inspiration from a recent trip into the Cairngorms just in time for the first serious snowfall of the year. The walk up was eerily misty but once in the bowl of the corrie it suddenly began to lift, revealing spectacular black rocky outcrops and snow filled gullies.
Another new linocut fresh off the press, Sea Campion are one of my favourite flowers clinging to tiny scraps of turf in among the rocks at the bottom of my parents croft on Skye. The delicate white petals and subtle veins somehow withstand the battering they receive from the elements and always seem to have a tangle of twines, interesting flotsam and jetsam intertwining with their roots.
