Huntress 9" x 18"

My completed drawing of this beautiful female cheetah is now complete,ive entitled it 'Huntress'.i hope you've all enjoyed watching the progression of this piece,now its back to the drawing board!

New Cheetah drawing update

My latest pencil drawing is progressing well and I'm now on the home straight working my way through the fur texture on the cats body.

New zambian cheetah drawing underway

This is the beginnings of my latest pencil drawing and another part of my collection of images borne out of my trip last year to Botswana and Zambia.
I had the privilege of handling this female cheetah and going on a bushwalk with her in Zambia,an experience I shall never forget.The cats face is complete except for the eye and now ive moved on to make a start on her spots which will take a whole day in the studio to layer up until nice and dark.

Spring Lapwing 12" x 16" oil on board

My latest painting of the beautifully iridescent Lapwing is now finished and its been an absolute joy to paint.I'll now set it aside for a while to dry thoroughly before sorting out a nice frame for it and hopefully get it out on show in the summer,if I don't get an offer beforehand.

Lapwing oil painting update

I'm so pleased with this little painting so far I can barely contain myself!. I set myself the task of capturing the iridescence of the lapwings feathers when caught in full spring sunshine and I really think,much to my surprise,that ive succeeded.The feathers were so beautiful in the light,and so many different colours that it caught my attention and demanded to be painted.if only every painting I attempted could fire up my enthusiasm and bring me so much pleasure as this simple little painting I would be one very happy painter.next I shall finish the birds legs and re-paint the breast feathers once theyre dry and then its mud,glorious mud and an attempt to show the lovely shiny,wet colours here too.

little oil painting underway

Its been quite a while since I picked up paint brushes and tried once more to do battle with colour and try and produce a worthy image.I have been very pre-occupied with producing pencil drawings and looking for new,fresh ways to invigorate the drawings and so painting has taken a backseat.to be honest I hadn't really got any plans to do any oils for a while yet but I was inspired to pick up the brushes again after a lovely bright sunshine-filled spring walk along the river Hamble shoreline near my home in warsash.as I walked along the shoreline there were many waders and over-wintering ducks and geese to be seen,and as usual I had my camera with me when the sun came out and illuminated the water and wet mud along with a lovely Lapwing.The birds feathers are iridescent in the sun and the most amazing colours could be seen and so I very quickly grabbed some camera shots before the bird was away.when I got home later that day I checked the images on my computer screen and was blown away by the way my new camera had caught the colours to perfection.The colours were so appealing that I couldn't resist the temptation to dig out my oil paints and see if I could do the image justice.this little painting,with very little in the way of composition is the result of those efforts so far.it has been sitting on an easel in the corner of the studio and in-between pencil drawing ive been working on the water and layed in the underpainting of the mud.after my last drawing I picked up the brushes again as I was suffering from a bit of bloc and made a start on the bird itself.it is slow-going as colour and I don't see eye to eye on many an occasion but I'm happy to plod on with this one and see if I can get my eye back in for some more colour works to come.i hope you like it thus far.

Vigilance 8" x 17"

completed my new pencil drawing today 'Vigilance'.its another image based on an encounter in Botswana last year,this time in the moremi game reserve.the animals were part of a small group who had sought shade from the heat of  the day but were nonetheless still very alert and vigilance was the order of the day due to the thick cover all around,in which a predator could easily have been lurking.

Zebra and foal drawing

Working on a new drawing of a zebra and foal,part of a group I encountered in Moremi game reserve in Botswana.
The animals were in the shade during the heat of the day and so the drawing depicts the animals mostly in shadow but with a few lovely highlights where the sun penetrated the tree cover.This is again quite a small scale image and because of this I opted not to stretch the paper beforehand in order to eliminate my usual preferred texture allowing me to use my clutch pencils for finer detail than I can usually achieve at this scale with wooden barrelled pencils.

'To The River' 4.25" x 16.5"

My latest Elephant drawing is now finished and I'm really pleased with how the crop turned out.i think its condensed the movement and detail into a nice format without 'losing' anything that I wanted to show in the drawing.the drawing is based on an encounter beside the Chobe river in Botswana where a group of elephants on there way to the river to drink crossed the trail in front of our safari vehicle,each one giving us a cursory flap of those huge ears as they passed in front of us.