Media Musings

The past few weeks have been spent working around the property but art-time has been spent trying to develop my work across a range of media. I find that switching approaches and spending a period of time exploring what different materials can offer to me and how I can best use their properties.

The Sharpie drawings continue and they are now finding a place in my general process of making art – I now use the medium as an interface between the sketchbook and either a larger-scale fully developed Sharpie painting, or as the preliminary colour study for colour-work using different materials.

This Sharpie sketch went through several incarnations until the finally realised version manifested in the form of an oil painting on canvas . . .

. . . and these little Sharpie studies collided often, in the form of a watercolour painting and finally (for now) a fully blown Sharpie piece.

The nature reserve is developing better than I could have imagined – some of the willows are now over 6 feet tall (although the winter blasts will no doubt curtail their enthusiasm – at least they should have decent roots in readiness for he spring spurt) and the pond has been visited by an interesting selection of species including several snipe (one of which I watched, sketched and eventually committed to watercolour) and a fabulous green sandpiper which stayed briefly, but long enough for me to fire off a couple of record shots of its visit).