up close and observational

It's been lovely to have my evenings back for a while but I miss the creativity now and, more especially, the drawing. It keeps me sane. I have a fabulous botanical illustration book and stretched paper drying but meanwhile, for the purpose of this post, I raked out these old chestnuts (well ok, they're actually apples), done way back in college. Not quite good enough nor detailed enough for professional botanical illustration (I need to get me a magnifying glass for that apparently) but sometimes it's good to have a point of reference. I want to see how much (if any) I have improved in 20 years...

nice surprises

The world of full time work has left little time for blogging recently and anyway, unless you want the lowdown on what a drawing of an oil rig sea deck looks like, there's been nothing much to report. Until today that is.

As a contrast to the computer rendering I've been doing all day, I'm getting the paints out to try my hand at some botanical illustration, partly because it's something I've been toying with the idea of for ages but I figure it'll be super useful for the Growing Boy too. It'll be therapeutic to take my time and focus purely on composition and the painting process for a bit instead of always rushing to an end result (usually to meet a deadline I've left until the last minute). This time there's no deadline, give or take the risk of shrivelling... The bad boys above are chilling in my fridge (for freshness!) as I type.

But what are the surprises? You may remember some of my work has been at the Hung gallery in Inverness for a while now. I hadn't, it's been so long in fact I'd forgotten it was there. But yesterday I got a surprise email from owner Kevin to tell me he's sold a Highland Cow print and the original Black Dog illustration "Both of which went to customers who instantly fell in love with them and have been given pride of place in their homes" Which is very cool.

But even cooler still is my new shiny sunshiny yellow FrancisFrancis! coffee machine - a fabulous [birthday] surprise which I'll be using to make my coffeecoffee! of a morning.