Category Archives: gardens project

Away with the birds

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Away with the birds

Another New Studio

away with the birds

‘a murder’ 10/04/26

In April I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get cloud anchors to work in Meadow  and finding a series of issues. Eventually I resorted to using image tracking which I can make work perfectly well. To do what I want with ‘a murder’ is going to take a lot of resolution. I removed the nest from the sculpture and added a series of ‘crosses’ from the earlier bird sculptures.

away with the birds

‘a murder’ (detail) 10/04/26

At the moment these are effectively maquettes, I’ll make them more solid at a later stage. The sculpture will be animated in AR by overlaying each ‘cross bird’ with a twin flying in a limited space above it. A flock will rise from the trees and return on a repeating cycle.

I put a webpage together covering the development of the birds as they’re a significant project now.

away with the birds

‘starlings’ 10/04/26

The other piece that I’m spending time on is ‘starlings’, this was ‘the shapes birds make in the air 11’ but has changed as I remembered some textures I made six years ago and have been contemplating working towards a book that brings the birds together with the garden in the manner of Elisabeth Bletsoe’s ‘Birds of the Sherborne Missal’ The pieces will be centred on observations of each mornings visitors in the garden and have drawings, sculptures and AR/VR works linked from them.

away with the birds

‘the shapes birds make in the air’ 10/04/26

I also found myself frustrated by the messing about with AR and animation in blender as well as troubles with my portable hard drives. I decided to revisit the source and started to draw birds again.

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The April drawings can be seen here

  • Draw Every Day – April 26
    Draw Every Day – April 26
    Draw Every Day - April 26 Continuing to draw every day, finished Book 28 on 20th March. I've ...
    See photo »

…and the March images here

  • Draw Every Day – March 26
    Draw Every Day – March 26
    Draw Every Day - March 26 Continuing to draw every day, finished Book 28 on 20th March. I've ...
    See photo »

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

Or you can go the Galleries page on the top menu

The drawings are posted to  Instagram each day.

 

Birds and Trees

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Birds and Trees

November has been all about birds and trees, mostly birds, mixed in with a lot of preparation for Open Studios on the last weekend of the month. After thinking about birds and trees last month I started to draw birds.

Birds and Trees

‘Scattering’ (geese) 10/11/25

This drawing of geese seemed the appropriate way to complete the first of the big drawings I laid backgrounds for in the last week. I made myself four large sheets for drawing, each made by using three A1 sheets of cartridge and using wallpaper paste to stick them together.

‘Jackdaw’ 14/11/25

I used these to make four drawings, starting with this one of a jackdaw.

‘Gull’ 12/11/25

Moving on to the seagull,

Birds and Trees

‘Pigeons’ (after Milton Avery) 12/11/25

While also working on the second, darker, sheet stretched last week to draw pigeons.

‘Rooks’ 14/11/25

‘Gulls’ 17/11/25

Then I a made the crows and the seagulls. I gave them a kind of order but in reality they tend tom get worked on concurrently and ordered according to completion rather than the beginning. The pigeons reference Milton Avery’s ‘Paris Pigeons’ from 1955.

I deliberately made these sheets to have a rough texture, it works better for some drawings than others, that gives the impression of the sky or of the breeze.

‘Dark Crows’ 19/11/25

I made two small drawings of crows above trees while I was thinking of rookeries and realising that my crow drawings are actually rooks.

Birds and Trees

‘Light Crows’ 19/11/25

It’s the splayed wing-tips!

‘a murder’ 19/11/25

This led to the big drawing ‘a murder’ with the birds rendered as gestural shapes against the yellowing sky.

‘Crows in flight’ 24/11/25

I made some black shapes from offcuts of styrofoam to mount and give the idea of rooks flying together.

I had a visit from some rooks, I assume, on the 25th November. We usually get one or two rooks or crows in the garden but this is the most I have seen at any one time. Maybe that’s what you get for thinking about birds and trees.

‘Crows in flight’ 11/25 detail

These are to be mounted above head height.

Studio 26/11/25 ‘the difference between birds and trees’ and ‘Crows in flight’

Then presented in conjunction with ‘the difference between birds and trees’.

Open Studio 29/11/25

Open Studio 29/11/25

Open Studio 29/11/25

These images are from the open weekend, 29th and 30th November. There were fewer visitors than last time, Saturday was miserable and rained all day. Sunday was better and I got a tentative sale and an offer of an exhibition next year.

More crows in flight 30/11/25

I did some drawing on both days, the small ones in response to requests for smaller works to buy. My intention was to separate them for framing but the birds seem to work well together.

The artist in the studio 30/11/25

Finally I got photographed by Mike Stubbs when he visited the studio on Sunday, somewhere between the Pub Landlord and Buster Bloodvessel.

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The November drawings can be seen here

  • Draw Every Day – November 25
    Draw Every Day – November 25
    Draw Every Day - November 25 Continuing to draw every day, finished Book 26 on 1st December. ...
    See photo »

…and the October images here

  • Draw Every Day – October 25
    Draw Every Day – October 25
    Draw Every Day - October 25 Continuing to draw every day, finished Book 25 on 14th October ...
    See photo »

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

Or you can go the Galleries page on the top menu

The drawings are posted to  Instagram each day.

 

   

 

 

Two Trees Sculpture

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Two Trees Sculpture

Two Trees Sculpture

Two Trees Sculpture 03/10/25

I started the companion piece, the larger tree, at the beginning of October. The process, as I noted last month demands that each section be dry before you can move on to the next one. This lends itself to my working pattern of being in the studio every other day.

The link to the drawings is essentially only the notion of working on the figures as a pair.

Larger Tree 09/10/25

Two Trees Sculpture 09/10/25

As I developed the larger tree the relationship between the two parts changed as each stage was added.

Two Trees Sculpture 10/10/25

The two parts work together in a manner similar to the Henry Moore two part reclining figures but there are obviously a lot of alternatives. There is probably a case for saying any two objects that stand together activate the space between them to effectively render another form.

Two Trees Sculpture

Studio Scrapbook 13/10/25

I thought about the finish for the two objects on the 11th October, another idle moment when an idea popped into my head and I drew it in my studio scrap book. Subsequently I decided that the marks should be leaf like.

Two Trees Sculpture 13/10/25

I added the larger form to the large tree to give a better balance and then patched the flaps where the lining paper didn’t stick properly.

Two Trees Sculpture 17/10/15

Ending up with this. I’ve still not decided which orientation the two pieces should have.

Two Trees Sculpture 20/10/25

This is where I left the piece on the 20th October.

Two Trees Black

Two Trees White

When I painted the figures I laid the base for two big drawings.

Smaller Tree (detail)

The pattern was a loose leaf carved into a sponge.

Two Small Trees, Balby

During the latter half of the month we decided to have our open studio event on the last weekend in November so a lot of time was given over to cleaning and preparing for that event. The two small trees were mounted and varnished.

Jackdaw 28/10/25

A few days out of the studio led me to think about the difference between trees and birds, given that all my work lately has been centred around the garden space and exploring notions of property and commons, it’s past time that the inhabitants should be asserting their influence. I’ve been reading two books in particular alongside this process, Daniel Eltringham’s ‘Poetry and Commons‘ and Michael Symmons Roberts and Paul Farley’s ‘Edgelands‘ . The latter is a difficult read because of the ‘poetic’ writing style and the former a difficult read because of the academic writing style. This particular poetic writing tells you what you should be feeling about the text and the academic spends a lot of time telling you what is going to be discussed later.

All this to say I though about jackdaws and made a small model because I’d seen (in my head) one sitting on the big tree.

Studio 31/10/25

Studio, ‘The difference between trees and birds’ on the left and ‘Two small trees’ on the right

So these are a couple of shots of the studio with the small trees and the large two piece sculpture now called ‘The difference between birds and trees’.

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The October drawings, including the 2000th consecutive drawing can be seen here

  • Draw Every Day – October 25
    Draw Every Day – October 25
    Draw Every Day - October 25 Continuing to draw every day, finished Book 25 on 14th October ...
    See photo »

…and the September images here

  • Draw Every Day – September 25
    Draw Every Day – September 25
    Draw Every Day - September 25 Continuing to draw every day, finished Book 24 on 14th ...
    See photo »

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

Or you can go the Galleries page on the top menu

The drawings are posted to  Instagram each day.