The End of an Era Two events this summer have made me aware of the passing of a generation of artists who were an inspiration. The first was...

At the New English Happened to be in Hereford last week and was delighted to discover an exhibition by members of the New English Art club i...

stagestruck at midsummer Around midsummer my wife and I become stagestruck. It starts in early June with visits to the Royal Shakespeare The...

Mill on a Bruges Canal Pen Study – This windmill stands on the banks of a quiet canal between Bruges and Dammer. I discovered it while takin...

Canals, Beer and Chocolates I'm just back from a trip by Eurostar to Bruges. It is city frequently compared with Venice because of its c...

A Ferry Tale I fished this painting out of a draw today because my wife remembered it and thought it would be nice to send as a birthday car...

The Place of Stones I began this painting by simply taking pleasure in making vigorous marks with a few pastel sticks and blending them by r...

Autumn Evening, Great Langdale. The Royal Watercolour Society’s Diploma Collection has a wonderful painting of the ‘Dents des Bouquetons, Ar...

Watercolours Fast and Loose – but are they any good? I regularly post to artists’ forums and become a bit dismayed by the almost universal p...

Painter IX again At last things are coming together. I’ve found a simple way of working with Painter IX that I can get on with. This involve...

Going Digital I'm resolved to gain some competence with Painter IX this year. I’ve tinkered about with it and found it a difficult piece...

Thank You Prof. Gombrich ‘There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.’ These are a surprising couple of opening sentences ...

The Way I Was: doing a Wesson When starting out in watercolour it’s a good idea to focus on a painter whose work appeals. Once, for me and o...

A Ruskin Masterclass on colour I’ve just picked up my copy of Ruskin’s ‘Elements of Drawing’ again, it’s a timeless work because the advice ...

Fanciful Gothic Beasts This pastel was composed around 1992 from sketches of the misericords in the choir stalls of St. Laurence, Ludlow. T...

‘A brief encounter after more than 15 years.’ Yesterday I went into our local print gallery just to browse. They have boxes of cheap mounted...

“It’s Like Meeting Old Friends.” I’m married to a woman who is passionate about tidiness so when faced with the threat of having my normally...

Scilly tips for Sketchers Sketching outdoors in front of the subject beats having to work solely from photographs. When working out of door...

More Candidates for reworking Although these two pastels started as ‘plein air’ sketches one ended up as a finished pastel. It was a mistake...

Second Thoughts - reworking in a different medium. I’m currently taking a look at some paintings I did a few years ago with the idea of rewo...