WEBSITE

My website has now been closed for refurbishment and updating by my good friend Gary Noden in line with the design of the blog. It will feature new artwork when up and running again which I hope will be within the next month. I've been busy trying to get the decks clear so I can get some birding in this spring and I am currently working on some pieces for the Isles of Scilly Nature Review and  Lancs Bird Report which I hope to bury over the Easter, after Easter its heads down to start on the cover for the BTO webs publication which I have to thank another friend for namely Jack Ashton B! Attached are two sketches recently done of the female Smew at Old Moor, both were done in the field, the top one done very quickly indeed with a little more care on the lower one, all the tones etc were done with pencil with the colour wash put over when i got home, toneing and doing the shadow in the pencil first literally makes a 30 second over painting job!

I finally started to get some new artwork together to update the website, a lot of that work will be in the near future publications of the Yorkshire Report and the Spurn Nature Review, the following very spontaneous watercolour was of a flock of Common Scoters over the sea, I tried not to fiddle in too much detail and do each bird with one swoop of the brush and then the inclusion of shadow when they were semi dry.

I've just finished a lot of coloured artwork for the Spurn and Yorkshire Bird Reports and amanged to find a spare hour on Saturday to sketch out the kitchen window, the feeders are currently very busy with Lesser Redpoll, Chaffinch, Bullfinch, most of the tits and Blackbirds. The Blackbirds and Chaffinchs were confiding and I've attached some sketchs done within the hour of watching.

I'm also in the process of over hauling the website to match the new look blog and will be including new colour artwork hopefully by the end of February on that.

NEW YEAR

The last couple of months have been basically taken up by the county of Yorkshire, all the illustrating work had something to do with the said county! The image above of an arctic tern is for this years Yorkshire Bird Report published by the YNU and will be out later this year. I have a number of illustrations in this publication and am now coming to the end and near completion. This painting was watercolour and gouache on 300g stretched watercolour paper. With the end in sight I will be freed up to do some birding and field sketches.

YORKSHIRE BIRDING

I was asked to produce a header drawing for YORKSHIRE BIRDING magazine which I contribute to on a regular basis, it was for an article in relation to breeding Great Black backed Gulls. I wanted to do something different other than showing the adults so I decided to draw the chicks, something I had not done before.

NEW DESIGN

I've finally managed to get myself organised and re design my blog and in the near future, pre Christmas hopefully, overhaul my website with new work and simplification. Its been a very busy period over the last few months but I did have plenty of time to get some birding in and a few visits to Spurn, a lot less than normal but hope to rectify that next year. The blog will now contain more field sketches with finished work going onto the website periodically but the odd finished painting / drawing will also be on the blog. The first for the new period is one of the illustrations that's just been published in the Isles of Scilly Nature Review of a WOODCHAT SHRIKE. I've also uploaded some sketches I did of ARCTIC WARBLER and GREENISH WARBLER observed this Autumn on the east coast, it was great to study these two species within weeks of each other.