Author: Richard

Fur and Feather

fur and feather textures

Fur and feather textures drawn for my Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate
Domestika course by Román García Mora, using some of the virtual brushes he created.

St Pancras

St Pancras

It’s so long since I drew in London so I took the opportunity as we waited for a train to draw St Pancras from a bench in the welcome shade of the Francis Crick Institute.

Towpath

Along the towpath: buff-tip caterpillar; the brandy-bottle seed-pod (botanically it’s a berry) of yellow water-lily; an orb-web spider getting lucky and water fern turning red amongst the duckweed and floating pennywort.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Homemade Card

ipad gallery

This handsome guy drawn by Florence kicks off my ‘Homemade Card’ gallery. Happy birthday to Florence and Ruby.

See new item on the main menu above 🙂

Red Ink

In the late ’60s or early ’70s, when handwritten balance sheets were becoming a thing of the past, my dad brought home this surplus-to-requirements 20-ounce (more than half a litre!) bottle of Parker Super Quink permanent red ink, ‘the only ink containing SOLVE-X for better pen protection’.

Ever since, I’ve been wondering how I might use it. Could a palette of black and red evoke the calm sophistication of Chinese calligraphy? No, it reminds me of the artwork for Roger the Dodger in The Beano, printed in two-colours on newsprint in the 1960s.

Tough Work

‘Did you manage to get any gardening done after drawing this and photographing the robin?’, a friend on Instagram asks me. Well yes, Jacqui, you’re going to be amazed at the transformation!

These Olympus Tough macro shots, taken while weeding the potato bed, include a holly blue butterfly.

Tool Belt

tool belt

I’ve been working my way over the veg beds weeding, mainly with a small hand fork but occasionally I need a pair of secateurs so I’ve gone for my garden tool belt. Also in there, my Olympus Tough camera. I had been keeping it in the leg pocket of my works trousers but if the resident robin hops down in front of me, or a holly blue butterfly lands on the nearby marjoram, it takes too long to unzip the pocket and retrieve the camera.