This little sketch was done back when I was in school, so how old is it?
It was drawn from an old (1892) photo by Paul Martin and was done in one of those tiny memo books on lined paper, about 3" by 4", but it's so old the lines have completely faded off one side.It's been pinned up above my art table for years and it's getting brittle and yellow, so I thought I'd scan it and preserve it in case it falls to pieces. One day I may even make a painting of it, but I like this little scribble too. Sometimes things hang around for so long we stop even seeing them, so it's a surprise when you take the time to examine them.

I think I was fascinated by this photo of two long ago little girls because I'm a twin and it reminded me of pictures of us.
Click on the picture to see it bigger.

Still doing cats...My computer seems to have made these much redder than they are in real life, but that's ok. I do love red tabbies and the nuances in their patterning.
The very first cat I can remember us owning was a red and white tabby like this. He was a foul tempered thing called Rusty and gave us far more scratchings than he was worth. I always loved his colouring though.

Sometimes at night I'll grab a book on cats or dogs or horses and I'll try to draw as many things from it as I can. I listen to the tv and don't let myself concentrate too much on what I'm doing, just quick scribbles one after the other.
I like to work in pen because there's no going back, mistakes remain and there's not much you can do about it.

But the drawings aren't the point, and I don't like to get too precious about them. The main thing is looking and translating what you see to the page and the practice ,practise, practise.

There might be some other subject you can fudge and make up what you don't know but animals ain't it. You have to be familiar with every bit of them, and I'm not there yet, which is why I keep filling up those sketchbooks...

These cats were done from photos, nothing wrong with that, is there?

Even though I love to draw from life it's just not practical all the time. I hope there aren't any Art Police around to tell me off.


I know, his right eye is smaller than the left, who can be bothered fixing every mistake? Not me.

What ever you do, don't trust this face!
The owner chews up toilet paper, piddles in the house and tips the rubbish bin over. I'm hoping he'll grow out of all this naughtiness, but in the meantime he's so darn cute! He's my son's Staffordshire Bull Terrier puppy named Mac and he's 12 weeks old.

This is the first time I've tried to paint him, just a quick watercolour, and if I'd known how hard it is to paint'brindle', I would have insisted on a black and white mongrel ! Too much fiddling went on, and I'm going to have to persevere until I find a method of rendering his fur that I'm comfortable with."Tabby" is much easier.

He sleeps a lot, so I can sketch him while he's unconcious at least. Otherwise he's hard to keep still, but I still have a try sometimes. Here are some full pages (A4) and then some blown up details. If you click on the image it should come up bigger.



As you can see, lots of starts and scribbles, but it all adds to the store of images.

It's pretty sad that it's nearly a year since I started this blog.


I had high hopes for 2006, I thought I could dedicate myself to improving my art, and reach out to a wider community without risking too much. But Life, as always, doesn't exactly dance to our tune...
In fact Life derailed my plans in April of last year when I became my mothers carer, which involved coping with shifting two houses of furniture , caring and nursing her as she grew more ill and sadly her death in August. I still don't know if I'm on an even keel, but I think I can cope with the blog again now.

No blogging didn't mean no painting or drawing, thank goodness, but I haven't done as much as I'd hoped to. Nevertheless this is a new year and I intend to focus even more on making art the most important thing in my life.

And I hope to live up to the title of this blog and actually come out of the closet this time, so that I can share what I'm doing, while I'm learning.