Burned Heather

burned heather

Earlier this spring, the skies above the moors were full of thick plumes of smoke.  Great patches of heather lay blackened where they had been burned.  This is not some hideous act of vandalism, but is good land management practice.  Burning off patches of moorland encourages new growth which the baby moorland birds like to eat; whilst keeping other areas untouched for the birds to safely nest in.  This practice also keeps the heather from getting too overgrown, as it can become a serious fire hazard otherwise.

The picture is taken from a bird’s eye viewpoint, and drawn from a photo.

 

Draw something round

stone ballWell, I set myself a challenge with this!  The challenge was to draw something round.  We have a wonderful stone ball made of grey Kirkstone from the Lake District.  To stop it rolling about, we’ve propped it in a metal t-light holder that normally holds 3 t-lights.  This is what I’ve attempted to draw.

 

Drawn on cartridge paper with 6B graphite stick and much use of pencil eraser.

 

Buttons

buttons

I’ve brought these buttons home from textiles class.  They may end up embelishing the doll/figure that I’ve been making.  She may make an appearance here one day – depending upon how shy she’s feeling.

Parsley

parsley1parsley2

This is painted across two pages of a sketchbook and scanned in two halves.  I’ve tried to find a way of stitching the two halves together, but can’t find a way to do it. 

This is painted in response to the EDM challenge to paint something green.

Gleaming

lifedrawing

Life drawing from Friday.  We had some luscious silky smooth white chalk to play with.   As you can see, I rather overdid it, but it was so lovely to use.  Much, much more practice required for life drawing.  I’ve been continuing to draw daily, and have been rather compulsively drawing my wooden artist’s mannequin, trying to get proportions right.  I still get the legs too short!

Figure Studies

figure studies

Drawn from photos.  I need so much more practice at drawing the figure!  Drawn with 8B pencil which seems to drag on the paper.  I expected it to be softer.