A Turaco & An Author...

I finally finished this coloured pencil drawing of a turaco - the bird was finished days ago, but the shrubbery took a long time!  I'm very pleased with this, especially as it is my first foray into using Derwent Coloursoft pencils.   I need to take a better photo in daylight...if we ever get any decent daylight...then this one will be up for sale.

Last night on Twitter I joined in the W.H. Smith Sketch Off - they gave us a photo and it was our job to sketch it by any means within an hour and a half.  The photo was of Roald Dahl and was a lovely subject, plenty going on in that face!  I managed to complete it in about an hour, despite having it on my lap and wrestling with the dog who also wanted to be on my lap.  I think with teaching children on a regular basis and having to sketch all kinds of things at speed in order to show them what I am talking about has improved my own sketching skills immensely.

I received the February Art &Parcel package yesterday and was thrilled to see some Chinese brushes, ink &paper inside - can't wait to have a go!

Currently on the needles - this little beauty.  LOVE this yarn!

Hello February!

I've never been so glad to see the back of a month as I am to wave goodbye to January 2016!  What a ghastly few weeks it has been - I am hoping that February will see an upturn in our luck as we could sure use it.

This little pencil drawing has gone some way to keeping me sane - I've put a considerable amount of hours into it, but it is very slow progress.  Nearing the finish line now, just the left-hand greenery to do.  I'm using Derwent Coloursoft pencils - lovely selection of colours, but do need a lot of repeated going over to get the depth of colour I am after.  Not a problem, in fact quite soothing!  I did discover that I can scrape back the applied colour with a sharp blade to reveal the first colour used - terrific for detail on the shiny feathers.

I've had this sumptious ball of laceweight yarn for months now, since my last trip to London.  Finally started a wide lace scarf with it and am loving the way the colours blend into each other.  The flash on the camera has made the purples a lot brighter than they actually are, but it is still a stunning colourway.

I've been having a small spring clean of various drawers in the house lately, the spice drawer being one of them.  I discovered I had caraway seeds (who knew??) and with the left over beetroot in the fridge, it all came together to make this interesting cake, recipe in this month's Simple Things magazine.  I wonder if it tastes as good as it looks...

Taking It Slow...

Well, the beginning of 2016 was so awful that I haven't felt very inspired of late.  However, as things slowly quiet down it has been possible to gently get back into the swing of things. I've had this picture of a turaco in mind for months, probably since the summer, and have finally got a spare week to get on with it.  I am using Derwent Coloursoft pencils - a huge set of 72 that I was given on my birthday.  They are indeed quite soft and took a while to get used to, but I am now getting the hang of them and realising they need to be built up with many layers to get the depth of colour I want, but it is worth the extra effort.  The slow pace has been great for de-stressing!

With the January sales going on in our town, I have found several knitting books going very cheap.  One had this fab hat pattern in it, which justified the whole £3 I spent on the book!  Quite complicated when you are not feeling 100%, but it turned out well - a present for my boy!

It's been a tad chilly this week -this was the edge of the pond yesterday where the fountain had gone off centre and sprayed the rocks.  Pretty!

Turaco

Turacos have to be one of my favourite birds.  Whenever I visit places like Birdworld, I have to be forcibly removed from the turacos cage as I could spend forever playing with them - they are just such friendly and comical little fellows!

This painting is based on photographs I  took a couple of  years ago at a place on the way to Oxford called The Living Rainforest.  It's not big and consists of one large glasshouse packed to the gills with tropical plants, free-flying butterflies, cappuchin monkeys and....turacos on the loose!  Needless to say, I was in seventh heaven having these brilliant little birds sit on my hand and clamber around - they don't bite like parrots either.

The painting is a watercolour - now that made it hard to obtain the jewel-like colours and irridescence of these birds!  I'm not sure I pulled it off successfully, but this was the best I could do.