More Report Illustrations

Red Kite
Pencil and Ink Wash. 70mm x 170mm.



Marsh Harrier (female).
Pencil and Ink Wash. 70mm x 170mm.


Managed to finish two more illustrations this week and got another two roughed out. These should be finished and ready for posting over the next couple of days.

Good news came in the post a few days ago. One of my two submissions to the Royal Cambrian Academy has been selected for the forthcoming open exhibition. I'm not sure which one though, that will have to wait until I go over and pick up the unselected print. The exhibition opens on 9th January and runs until 7th February 2010. Further information can be found at www.rcaconwy.org

I've also started some preparatory drawings for a couple of new linocuts. I should have something to post from these during the next few weeks.

Back to the illustration project

Cormorant. Pencil and Ink Wash. 130mm x 120mm.

I 've been busy over the last week, mounting and framing my submissions for the Royal Cambrian Academy exhibition. And on saturday we drove over to Conwy in North Wales to deliver them to the gallery. It should have been a good day out and the weather held for the drive across to Wales. But as we arrived in Conwy it started raining heavily and didn't stop for the rest of the day. However, the artwork was safely delivered so its fingers crossed for good news in a week or so time after the selection committee has made its deliberations.

I have managed to complete some work, roughing out more drawings for the bird club report and getting the Cormorant above completed. The drawing is based on the pen sketch I posted recently of a bird drawn at Denaby Ings.

Pentre Ifan Burial Chamber, Pembrokeshire.

Pentre Ifan.
5 Colour Reduction Linocut. 270mm x 180mm.
Edition of 6.

For once I had a plan and stuck to it. I try to limit my prints to around 5 or 6 colours, but usually get carried away and end up printing them in around 9 or 10. So with this print I deliberately stuck to my original scheme to complete the print in 5 colours. Two oranges, two greys and black. This is the second of my two proposed submissions to the Royal Cambrian Academy Open Exhibition.

One of the best known Prehistoric monuments in West Wales, this Neolithic burial chamber was one of the first archaeological sites to be protected by the earliest Ancient Monuments Act of 1882. The 16 feet long capstone is supported almost 8 feet above the ground on three upright stones.

This viewpoint looking towards the west shows the rocky crag of Carn Ingli framed by the tomb. On its summit is one of the largest stone built Iron Age hillforts in Wales. The name derives from the latin mons angelorum meaning 'mountain of angels.'

Malham Cove

Autumn Sunlight, Malham Cove. Watercolour on 140lb Bockingford Paper. 196mm x 296mm.

This was never intended to be a finished work, I started it as a simple preparatory sketch for a larger acrylic painting. I was trying to plan out the areas of light and shade on the cliff face and I wasn't particularly concerned with the standard of finish. So I painted the first washes very quickly and with only a minimum of underlying drawing. Only the cliff top and the stream banks were delineated faintly with a 2b pencil. Unusually for me I also worked from dark to light, painting the large shadowed area of cliff and the wall on the left first, before washing in the areas of green, leaving random white spaces to represent the scattered rocks. Somewhere along the way the painting began to become a little bit more than a rough working study, so I worked it up. Painting very quickly trying to keep the initial spontaniety and freshness (I spent more time waiting for each wash to dry than I did painting them), although on reflection I overworked the foreground stream more than I intended.