Ava

This is a painting I made of my friend’s 10 year old dog, Ava.

A gorgeous boxer who was adopted from an American humane society, my friend has shared so much about Ava with me I couldn't help myself but to send her a little painting.

I’m a big fan of the Uni-ball Signo range of pens, and I bought myself a bronze and gold, using them to accent the brindle coat pattern along with metallic acrylic inks to make this brindle babe shimmer with goodness!

The Lab Rat of 2021

I often stumble across art which I was so stressed out with making that I hide it from myself in my studio until I can face it again. There’s an argument for not dating your work, as it seems a little presumptuous that you’re going to be a successful artist, and also dating can be less desirable by galleries if you made it some years ago.

But I’m so glad I dated this one, this little rat has been hiding from me since 2021 as you can see from my signature. I’m impressed I naturally made analogous colour choices, proving you can be just as creative with painting white animals as I have re-learned from my gull paintings.

Rats have big personalities and are very smart and social, I’d love to adopt a colony of pet rats but I think they would break my heart when they pass as they only live for two years. For now I am content to feed the rats which live sneakily under the decking in my garden, don’t tell the neighbours!

Avocets

I’m getting very sick of the gloom here in the UK, being a painter makes me quite irritable this time of year, where through straining eyes I do battle with colour in the sickly, weak light of winter mornings.

I pine for the summer where long days and walks lead me to an avocet paradise, practically on my doorstep.

A testament to giving nature a little bit more space, and they will gladly fill it!

I wrote about this and their stilted fluff balls on my NemobySea blog.

My Vegan Indian Ink Alternative

After learning about how some brands of watercolour paper is treated with animal gelatin, and how my beloved Indian ink contains crushed up beetles, it can be a little frustrating to balance ethical decisions when making art.

Luckily there are a lot of great resources on buying ethically as an artist. My favourite source is from Bromleys Art Supplies, it’s a good place to start and I recommend and refer to their blog post frequently.

Indian ink is a gorgeous medium, the gloopy, intense nature, the way it shines when it dries, I was anxious about finding a replacement. But like most things in life, the worry was for nothing!

Daler Rowney’s FW 028 black acrylic ink is everything you want from an imitation Indian ink. It does not have the gloopy quality, but then doesn’t clog your nibs either! It was a straight swap, it’s as deep as you need a black to be, flows nicely, interacts with water in that crackled way — It’s a perfect substitute as far as I am concerned.

Daler Rowney has an entire range of acrylic and watercolour inks, all completely vegan. I use these inks exclusively in my watercolour paintings, I’m especially partial to their 701 gold acrylic ink, it’s very shiny …

If you’d like a more complete understanding on why Indian ink isn’t vegan friendly you can follow that up on my website here. I will make more of an effort to update my website with more vegan friendly finds, it’s important for me to create artwork that is joyful for everyone 🐖

Three Chums and Two Bums

I don’t mean to spook you, I know it’s not my normal thing, but I’m really enjoying these nudes that I’m just breathing life to from my imagination.

Man is animal I suppose, not that we act like it or are comfortable with it in any way, counting myself in this too!

These people were painted in Tombow paint pens and Crayola SuperTips, and I have these three dudes hanging up in my workspace.

With looking at them every day I noticed over time the cheap Crayola colours breaking down and somehow disappearing from the paper altogether, I got the Tombow and Crayola to compare anyway, but you really do get what you pay for with art materials.

Ring Necked Parakeet

Nothing makes me fee morel part of a multicultural society than hearing the parakeets squawking overhead. Once on an evening walk I counted over 80 parakeets gorging themselves in a sycamore tree which also is a non native tree brought over by the Romans to the UK!

Since finding out that a lot of coloured inks for drawing contain shellac, I switched to FW Daler Rowney acrylic inks that blend nicely with watercolour, here I experimented with the gold acrylic and I’m loving how shimmery it stays even when dried on watercolour paper.

Electric Blue Octopus

Whilst painting and writing about this really awesome cuttlefish I found washed up on one of the local bays, I just couldn’t get enough cephalopod so I went ahead and created this jazzy octopus.

He came out more vibrant than I thought with the help of Brusho, it really is super saturated and pigmented and lasts so long, I even had to buy new pots for them as the ones they originally came in started to crack up on me! If you like this little guy, he’s floating about in my shop.

Yellow Wagtail

I’m familiar with the humble green tennis ball, my boy Nemo was the biggest fan of course. I thought I saw one tumbling over the shingle one morning, until I brought out my binoculars and discovered it was in fact a bird!

I still can’t believe we have such interesting birds in the UK. The more you learn about nature, the more you worry for it, and as for these little guys they are on the red list in the UK. I wrote about this glowing migrant on my Nemo by Sea blog, where you can also see the very photo I took of this bird on the pebbles, in all its tennis ball glory.

Colourful Kitty Pieces

I’ve been playing around with very simple shapes and colours, as I like most artists often overwork things to death. I liked the idea of puzzle pieces but things soon got out of hand with pieces grabbing other pieces, then it just turned into a crush of cats, so who am I to interfere?

Moon Jellyfish

It’s that period of about 3 weeks in the summer where the jellyfish explode into their blooms, nothing shoots sea water into my lungs harder than seeing a jelly glowing in the gloomy waters below.

But if you’re going to bump into any jelly, have your fingers crossed for the moon jellyfish, I’ve written a little bit more about these blobs on my free NemobySea blog.

NOODS

As mentioned previously, I have a lot of watercolour paper who’s “sizing” is failing which enabled me to be less precious and conservative about using up my stacks of watercolour.

After splotching around, I thought I’d take human form for once. Why not some artsy nudes, completely from my imagination — which is probably more worrying than direct observation at a life drawing class …


You can see especially in my ‘lady’ portrait, that the colours aren’t flowing normally and look patchy which is the result of the treatment of the paper disintegrating.

I used Tombow and Crayola SuperTips pens and scratched in some basic shapes and blended them on the paper with water to get some blobby interesting shapes, I then go on to sprinkle in a little Brusho for further texture. To finish I outline and draw into the dried colour with fineliner and ink to create these little people.

The Purple Hare I Almost Forgot

That is one big purple eye alright, which is why I couldn’t make up my mind about this little guy. I have a stack of watercolours that I hide away from view and come back to in a little while.

If you’re looking at something every day for weeks at a time you lose perspective, and you can lose your way too. It’s especially important for realism artwork that you take breaks so that you get proportions right … but here we don’t worry about that!

I really like this purple hare now, painted in striking Brusho. If you like him too, he’s available to buy in my shop.

An Indian Influence

I bumped into a neighbour who was recounting to me his amazing visit to India, and I was itching to paint something inspired by his stories so I made these tiny paintings in Brusho.

I am very much planted in Blighty, I don’t envy the airport theatre and hellish sardine sky travel. We have plenty of big orange cats here and if I want to be death rolled there’s plenty of sausage dogs who would take great pleasure in nipping and spinning my ankles until bloody. There’s parallels everywhere, who needs to travel?!

Compass Jellyfish

The weather is warming, the compass jellyfish are swarming!

Of course I’m going into the sea, anything over 10 °C and I’m in despite the nasty sting of the compass jellyfish. These floating aliens are absolutely gorgeous and I am honoured to share the water with them. I’ve written about these jellies in my NemobySea blog, hopefully this year I will avoid their painful embrace.

Blackbird in the Cherry Blossoms

I distinctly remember, in the early Spring after my beloved dog Nemo died, trudging through the rain towards the local bay and being struck at a blackbird taking shelter in a cherry blossom tree, we met eye to eye and it’s a very iconic memory for me.

I regard blackbirds as the super model of the bird world. Such poses, such vogue, this painting was again taking huge inspiration from Creative Abstract Watercolor. It’s not bad for a first attempt and I was horrible at painting anything black before (see here and here). When next Spring rolls around I’ll probably have another go at recreating this scene.

Sun's out Bun’s out!

I merged some techniques from Kate Rebecca Leach’s book Creative Abstract Watercolor to create this little rabbit. I’m really loving the shimmery gold, bronze and silver metallic inks.
I was never able to use them comfortably before but Leach’s book really takes the fear and pressure off you so you can enjoy the process.

This tiny rabbit painting is smaller than A7, I can’t quite believe I was able to shove quite so much detail into a painting about the size of two postage stamps.