Classic Pizza Company

 The Classic Pizza Company at Orleton Court Farm in Worcestershire serving up delicious pizzas paired with craft beers brewed onsite with home-grown hops. This illustration took probably the longest time I have ever spent on an artwork in terms of production, not actual drawing time. I have been dipping in and out of it over several months, eager to work on it but somehow finding it hard to concentrate on the detail and apprehensive of what direction it was going to take. I am fairly happy with the result, though  I had considered redoing it to make a few improvements.

Reflection

Another example of me not drawing what I had been planning to draw, but what I wanted to draw.

 

Seagull

Have done very little in the way of creating pictures for several months now. I spent quite a while concentrating on my writing and then got buried in decorating the house. There are a couple of picture ideas I want to work on but they will be time consuming and I am finding it hard to get motivated to start them. I began one, then decided to have a fall whilst decorating and bruised my ribs badly on the back of the sofa. In an attempt to do something creative whilst recovering I drew the above mainly as a playful doodling exercise to see what would appear.

 

Woodshed

New woodshed made from odd bits of wood and metal sheets lying around the garden. Now I will have decent dry wood for the chiminea.

 

Sketching People

Sketches drawn over a few hours in Hitchin yesterday. The basic line work was created with a fountain pen and then I added the watercolour washes and some bolder ink lines at home to enhance the images.
 

Biomass

Last year, fields of maize were harvested for biomass near Hitchin and the chopped maize stored in long sealed bags at the field edge (at a guess about 15ft wide and well over 100ft + long - like an enormous sausage). Passed the site today and saw this machine, a Ropa Euro Maus, waiting to unload the bag into a large articulated lorry. Unfortunately, I didn't see it in action because the lorry it was loading had got stuck in mud. After a few attempts of using a JCB telehandler to push it free, the lorry had to empty out its load (walking floor, not a tipper) until it was light enough to be pulled out using the JCB and a heavy chain. The lorry then drove off, empty.

I had only ever seen machines like this on YouTube used to load sugarbeet from stockpiles in fields into lorries - with a different header. I decided to adjust the photo I took and make it into a rather more interesting illustration on my iPad.

 

Reflection