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.

Fungi on the lawn

Woke up this morning and found this cluster of fungi on the lawn beneath the Silver Birch. Not sure on the identification though, but it made for an interesting grouping.

St Govans Chapel, Pembrokeshire

St Govans Chapel. 269mm x 180mm. Reduction Linocut.

This small chapel nestles, sheltered at the foot of the cliffs on a ledge above the sea (just off to the left of the picture). It is reached from the cliff top by a long flight of steps which wind down the cliff face. This is one of my favourite places along the Pembrokeshire Coast.

Although traditionally regarded as being of Dark Age origin, the existing building is unlikely to be earlier than the 13th Century. There is a little spring beside the entrance which is said never to flow over the chapel floor, from which the healing waters were scooped out and drunk from a limpet shell.

Snipe and Cormorants, Field Drawings.

Snipe. Pen and Ink.

Cormorants. Pen and Ink.

A trip to relatives in Doncaster yesterday, gave me the opportunity to have a walk around Denaby Ings for an hour or so. It was fairly quiet with not much around apart from good numbers of Gadwall and Mallard, and a solitary Speckled Wood Butterfly basking in the late autumn sunshine.

Next Project

Printing is well underway on my next Linocut, intended to be one of my submissions to the Open Exhibition at the Royal Cambrian Academy in January. The subject is St Govans Chapel in Pembrokeshire, an old sketching haunt from my student days. The print is based on a watercolour painting of the chapel that I posted about 12 months ago.

and printing assistant.........

There can't be many four year olds who know what a baren is and how to use one. She just doesn't have the strength to press down hard enough.

Illustrations

Jackdaws
Pencil and Ink Wash. 120mm x 105mm.

Peregrine Falcon Preening.
Pencil and Ink Wash. 100mm x 100mm.

After dithering around for the last couple of weeks, I've finally started on the set of illustrations for the 2008 Huddersfield Birdwatchers Club report. This is something of a labour of love as I've been illustrating the reports since I first joined the club, and this will be the 20th report I've done.

The Jackdaws were drawn as they tumbled on the breeze around the weather vane outside the doctors surgery in my home town. The Peregrine was sketched some ten years ago. I had been watching it for a couple of hours, trying to confirm that the pair were breeding. For the whole of that time it barely moved. Typically it flew off to the nest ledge at the moment that I took my eyes off it!