Pateley Bridge

When on holiday in Yorkshire last year, I stopped briefly at Pateley Bridge. I was only there long enough to walk to one end of the High Street and back, but was totally captivated by the old Yorkshire Stone buildings and small shops.

This is a view of one small section of the High Street, looking up the hill. I found the perspective tricky and haven't fully captured the steepness of the incline, but I found this to be an interesting and thoroughly enjoyable painting.

Mushrooms

In my garden I have an annoying clump of mushrooms that grow each year near the base of one of the apple trees. I usually try and remove them as soon as I see them, and since they grow in my lawn, they are almost always hacked up by my mower. Because of the way mushrooms leave their fungal spores in the soil, I even tried replacing a square of grass so as to discard the infected area, but still they grow.

This year, due to my inability to deal with them at the appropriate time, they have been left to grow. Today, with the sun shining nicely and me having time on my hands, I wandered out there with my camera and have loaded the results to my web site .... www.JWJonline.net/Mushrooms/.

I've tried searching to identify the strain (? variety) of mushroom but have had no success so far. If anyone knows, please let me know. ;-)

Knaresborough

A short while ago I did a quick pen sketch of Knaresborough, a small market town in Yorkshire. This was the view from the castle, along the valley towards the railway viaduct.

For a bit of fun I decided to print the sketch onto watercolour paper and add some colour. It was an interesting exercise especially in view of the small size of the paper (7" x 9") and the amount of detail in the sketch.

Halloween

Just a quick sketch of a pumpkin for Halloween.

Actually, this has been set as a Drawing Project for members of the art forum, and all of the entries can be seen on this page.

Brixham Harbour

I recently spent a fabulous week in the Torbay area and visited the beautiful small town of Brixham with its active fishing harbour. In the harbour is a replica of The Golden Hind, Sir Francis Drakes famous ship. This sketch was with non-permanent ink and a brush with clear water was used to 'pull out' the shaded area's. This is a medium I'm particularly fond of.

Market Hall, Chipping Campden

Built in 1623, this Market Hall caught my attention on a recent visit to the Cotswolds. All of the buildings in Chipping Campden, and other towns in this area, are constructed of this yellowish, locally quarred, limestone.

The Shambles, York

This is a pen & wash of The Shambles in the City of York. For any who don't know, this is a well-preserved medieval street of timber houses. Though I'm very pleased with the end result the painting hasn't turned out as I'd wanted. What I had intended from the outset was to draw the scene with a pen and then add only a minimal amount of colour, leaving the pen lines to do the 'talking'. Regrettably, as is so often the case, I didn't know when to stop and I've applied a lot more colour than I'd ever intended. I wouldn't have thought it would be so hard to NOT paint up to the lines and to leave some white spaces here and there. I also think the picture lacks a focal point.

So, I had a second go at this scene. The first thing I decided was to draw in the people jostling past the shop windows. This helped with the focal point issue. The other thing I did was force myself to use weaker colours and put my brush down once I'd laid in some washes. This still isn't the 'minimal colour' effect I was aiming for, but it's much closer.

I would really welcome any comments with regards to which version works best.