I love drawing and painting animals, but they never seem to sit still long enough! I use photos and sketches and colour studies to make a finished painting, and the results can be very detailed and time consuming.






















However I really love doing quick sketches from life, even if they're just rough scribbles. Sometimes I seem to capture a gesture or movement with more truth than I can achieve in a painting.


I do lots of these quick drawings, most do not have much merit because unless the subject is asleep they're always moving. Nevertheless, the real value comes from actually looking and studying , no photo can replace that first-hand knowledge.



These are details of the pages above, each sketch taking only one or two minutes. You've got to learn to be quick and not worry about mistakes- I just draw over the top of them. I use pen, I seem to be less tentative when I know it can't be erased!

This is a blue-tongue lizard, common in gardens around here. They're about 8" long and rather attractive.



If I were you Jessie, and I'd chased one of these beggars into an old piece of pipe, I would stick my head in one end and bark madly so that it echoed weirdly, then I'd dig furiously at the end of the pipe, even pick it up in my teeth and growl down it in frustration. Then I'd run around to the other end and bark hysterically through that too.

Oh, you've tried that already? I just thought I'd suggest it.

make me stop!

This is Jessie, my son's 5 year old minature fox terrier. I love her colouring , black and tan and white, and I wanted to try and capture some of her charachter in this watercolour sketch. However I've overworked it as usual. I pass through the phase of thinking it looks pretty good ....and make one brushstroke too many so that I spend an anxious 15 minutes trying to save what I had originally.

Why can't I just learn to STOP when it's done, instead of fiddling and labouring and spoiling things?

I'm happy enough with it now, but it's lost the freshness I saw earlier.