Portrait

A lunchtime doodle.

Dog Walking, Hitchin

Sketch made in Hitchin today of a man walking a dog. Unfortunately he walked off before I could draw his large dog so I did the buildings instead. 

Landscape Drawing

An illustration made whilst playing around with pencil-like brushes on the iPad - it is just an imaginary place. I have always liked the work of the Shropshire artist Brigid Wright (1939-2000) and this is influenced by her drawings. I will try and develop this style for illustrating the stories I am writing. Doing people is the difficult part!

Cotehele, Cornwall

Two sketches made a couple of days ago at the National Trust property of Cotehele in Cornwall. The first is The Edgcumbe tea room on Cotehele Quay and the second is a view of some garden trees, crocuses and snowdrops. 

Boar's Bridge, Cotehele, Cornwall

A torrent passes of seemingly boiling water:
tumbling, bubbling and pounding;
white-peaked unstoppable turbulence
below a hovering pale steam-like mist.
Yet to touch: a sharp, penetrating cold,
beneath a crisp icy blue sky.
Clamouring over pebble and stone,
down from the rain soaked hills
through the frost encrusted valley,
alongside hibernating woodland
and through rich pastured fields.
Bankside alders, oak, sycamore
hazel: with soft lamb tails of gold,
silhouetted against the bright sun
with sparkling fingers of condensation.
Their tall shadows carve paths
in eddies of delicate swirling vapour.
Bright laser-like lines of light
burn brilliant translucent greens
on bank-side frozen brambles.

Soon, the warming spring-like sun
and encroaching hillside shadows
dissipates the etherial light show
and the magic of the morning fades.

Old Skool Pantry, Luton

Spent a couple of hours at this new local cafe/restaurant in Luton. Really like it here, food looks tasty and it is a good place for me to sit, write and draw. Owner really liked this iPad sketch.

@oldskoolpantry on Facebook.

Teapot Tales No. 9: Pibbles, Endings and Where Next?

A series of short pieces of writing forming different perspectives

around a common theme.

Teapot Tales No. 9: Pibbles

The barn echoed with the loud chirping of sparrows. For most of the day they would hop around the floor of the old barn, picking up grains of wheat and anything else vaguely edible from the dusty floor. They would frequently fly up to the wooden rafters and sit there, cheeping incessantly away.

 At one end of the barn, high up on stack of hay bales, Pibbles eyed the scene. She had long given up any attempt to chase after them and preferred to bide her time and catch the occasional one unawares. One advantage of being up here was that it was the one place she could escape to when being chased by that annoying dog.

Twice recently whilst enjoying a peaceful hunting trip in the walled garden, she had been spotted and had to make a run for it. She had to dash to the wooden gates and squeeze underneath them. Then, run up the drive, over the compost bins, past the horse yard, through a gap between two barns, over the woodpile and then leap up the hay bales to safety. The little dog would be left yapping away beneath her until it got fed up and trotted off. She would then spent the next few minutes carefully washing her fur - more than that scruffy dog could do, it would be totally covered in mud, leaves, twigs and grass.

Endings

This completes my initial foray into exploring something new. I appreciate the stories may have been a little disjointed, but that was the intention. They were just an exercise to see what would happen when I put pen to paper.

Where Next?

I have now decided to completely re-edit all the stories into a more cohesive form of text. This I hope to do in the next week or two, then I will publish the result.

After that I will move on to other writing projects. There are several I am thinking about.