Great Shearwaters; Cape Clear Island; August 2009

About 50 Great Shearwaters were seen over the week by myself, having not seen the species in ten years I was thrilled to see them again, without a doubt the best of the seabirds found in european waters for me....

Gannets; Cape Clear Island; August 2009

A selection of Gannets sketches taken over the course of a week on the islands. Thousands seen passing Blanan, often within a few metres range...

Cape Clear Island; August 2009

Willow Warbler, 1st Calender Year.

Shag juvenile.

Choughs in flight.

Rock Pipit juvenile.


A few more sketches from my notebook taken over the week on Cape Clear Island...

New Watercolour; Great Crested Grebe

Evening Reflections; Great Crested Grebe (22"x12")

Watercolour on paper, again a developed field sketch from last year. Apalling weather here in sweden at the minute, it does at least help me to work on developing a growing backlog of fieldwork...

New Watercolour; Little Ringed Plover

Little Ringed Plover; Watercolour on paper (18"x12")

Developed from a field sketch posted here on the blog last summer....

Finished Painting; Autumn Woodlark

Autumn Woodlark; Finished Canvas. (30"x10") Acrylic Paint.

Detail from painting....

The latest finished piece, a Woodlark depicted in autumn grasses. Heavy use of paint by means of a pallette knife a feature of this piece, adds a lot of interest and helped me to avoid getting bogged down in detail with regard to rendering the grasses. Limited palette using just six colours including Neutral Tint and Titanium Thite. Raw Sienna, Olive Green, Cobalt Blue and Cadium Yellow the main pigments used...

Hobby and Emperor Dragonfly; New Painting.

Hobby and Emperor Dragonfly; Finished Painting; 36"x24"; Acrylic on Canvas.

Detail from the finished painting....

The bird blocked in over the sky...

The first stage complete. A couple of heavy coats of sky blue applied and left to dry before I went back in and added the cloud....


My latest painting, a fairly large canvas this one. The scene was inspired by my trip to Östra Styran a few weeks ago where I watched four of these brilliant little falcons hunting dragonflies over the reedbeds. Super sight and have wanted to paint it ever since.