Blossom

I can feel Spring in the air - even though it is colder than it's been all Winter ... the end is in sight .. 

Finn update

What a wonderful dog Finn is becoming. He's really settled in to our life now and seems to be very happy in his new routine. He's very loving and obviously up for all the walking that is expected of him.

It was Gra's birthday last week so we spent the day out walking, beachcombing, collecting and photographing. Plus a bit of eating and drinking too - the perfect day. Below are pictures of paint on the bottom of boats.

East Head at Wittering was very stormy but beautiful. I did a #2minutebeachclean and in the picture of the sand you can see the tiny pieces of plastic littering the beach - all the black and white bits are plastic too. They can be found all along the sand dunes now and this shocks me every time I see it. I also collected some shells and seaweed to draw.

Beachcombing

Walking along the beach, collecting things is one of my pleasures. Even picking up rubbish on a #2minutebeachclean is enjoyable for me! Here is my collection from the last beachcombing walk at Pagham beach - the inspiration too behind my latest illustration.

Woodland collection

Inspired by looking at the forest floor on my walks and collecting everything I see (which is becoming a bit of a problem in my house!) I've now drawn everything and put it together in a kind of pattern. 

olive trees

I've just finished my latest painting - inspired by olive trees in the garden with sunlight dappled through their branches.

Stamp

Yay - my illustration for 2minutebeachclean has been published in the great Uppercase magazine - issue 26! The brief was to design your ideal postage stamp and seeing as I am slightly obsessed with beach cleaning, I decided it was a good idea to highlight this cause.
Thanks for including my work Janine.

Painting update

As I wrote earlier I've been planning a new painting and came up with several ideas but none of them seemed to be quite right. Then it occurred to me - there was too much going on (well I had a little input from Gra too!). So I simplified it a lot and this is the end result - I finished the painting last week. What do you think? 

Shoreham

We visited Shoreham last week to see the houseboats, which are weird and wonderful and constructed from all sorts of paraphernalia - coaches - planes - even a robin reliant. I did not want to spoil it (if you are going to visit) by photographing them all, so this is just a taster. Park in beach green car park and they are right in front of you. I'm still doing my 2minutebeachclean as you can see.

Jays

I've been fascinated by Jays since childhood and have found quite a lot of their blue stripey feathers over the years. To look down and see the bright blue feather on a muddy path is pretty exciting to me but as I've said before I don't think I get out enough! Lately several Jays have been landing in the tree outside our bedroom window and it has been my first sighting of the actual birds. I've always thought they kept away from people because they were very shy.

Blues and reds

Here is the past few weeks in pictures. Walking on the South Downs and enjoying beautiful landscapes, Alfie modelling his new coat, managing to fit in some drawing and Alfie and I having a lovely cuddle. 

A great night at the Komedia in Brighton proudly watching Gra's band.