Oystercatchers at Roshven Bay

Progress shots of my latest drawing.i have worked up 4 of the oystercatchers and about half the foreground rocks and pebbles.It's been great fun so far to work on and i'm thoroughly enjoying drawing birds again after such a long time.Birds and water were always one of my favourite subjects,not surprising really,living so close to a river and the birdlife of southampton water.

My drawing,still on the board,has now been delivered to nature in art in preparation for it's debut as a demonstration piece next week.Hopefully it should be an enjoyable week with lots of visitors,although todays weather forecast tells of siberian snowstorms hitting the uk next week! must remember my woolly jumper!I'll post some photo's of the exhibition and venue next week

Oystercatchers at Roshven Bay

On my drawing board at the moment is an artwork depicting oystercatchers on the shoreline of a bay at Roshven a remote part of western Scotland.

I decided to portray this scene in a narrow panoramic format,although quite how long the finished image will be is not set in stone yet as i havn't finalized how many birds i want to include in the finished artwork.Compositionally,i'm inclined to crop my initial drawing at some point right of the 5th oystercatcher as i think this will work best.

i've photographed the drawing in thirds to show the various stages that i've worked the drawing upto.

The drawing itself will be used as a demonstration piece whilst i am Artist in Residence at Nature in Art a national collection of nature inspired art all housed in Wallsworth Hall,Twigworth near Gloucester in the uk.My residency runs from 3rd february untill 9th february and i'm looking forward to re-aquainting myself with some of my collectors.

Young Giraffe II

Siberian Tigress

Together

I work exclusively in graphite pencil using grades of pencil ranging from H grade at the hardest end of my range to 5B at the softest end.Works are built up in many layers to give an unlimited range of tones to work with and make it possible to give a very real impression of depth and detail.Each piece can take several weeks of work to complete.