Here's to a creative 2014!

2013 has been an amazing year, filled with lots of sketching and painting, love joy and inspiration. A brand new year lies at our feet and here's to putting the past behind us, opening a new door, stepping through and experiencing lots of new pleasures, meeting new people, spending time with our loved ones and, above all, being madly creative!

Happy New Year!

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Guinea Fowl in my garden

Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we’ll soon be in trouble.


- Roger Tory Peterson

Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

Helmeted guinea fowl (Numida meleagris)

I used to have dozens of guinea fowl pass through our smallholding here in Tarlton (Gauteng, South Africa), but these days it’s like Christmas seeing just a few of them. When we moved to Tarlton in the middle 70’s, we were one of a few owners living on the smallholdings and there were large tracts of open land with hundreds of mammals, birds and reptiles that crossed our paths daily. Snakes were rife and regularly had to be removed to a safer place, now we only see a snake a couple of times in the year. I used to have wild hares entering my garden and eating my Marigolds; I haven’t seen an hare for about 7 years. The same with hedgehogs, monitors, tortoises and jackal.

The area is now totally built up and our smallholding is now flanked by people on all sides, property fenced and surrounded by high walls – there are few, if any, empty tracts of of land anymore and I’m just wondering where all the wildlife has managed to find a safe refuge…

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Season's greetings 2013

What do we love about Christmas;
Does our delight reside in things?
Or are the feelings in our hearts
The real gift that Christmas brings.
It’s seeing those we love,
And sending Christmas cards, too,
Appreciating people who bring us joy
Special people just like you.
- By Joanna Fuchs

The holiday season is upon us and here in South Africa, my 7 Little Robins will be cheerfully chirping and singing to sunny skies and braaivleis (barbeque) over the Christmas period! Our weather will be bright, hot and sunny and half the nation normally spends their Christmas on our beautiful, white beaches.

Wherever you are spending Christmas this year, I wish you and your family a happy, festive season!

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Fun and practical art - Calendars for 2014

A collection of Daisies in watercolour and acrylics - Front Cover

Looking for a calendar for the new year? Something different? Who says art can't be practical? Keep track of your yesterdays and tomorrows with my fun and functional Redbubble calendars.This one above is from "Daisies in Coulour", a collection of daisies in watercolours and acrylics. I have quite a wide selection, you can choose from 'Crows - A Corvid Collection', 'Wildlife of Africa', 'Chickens', 'Africa | Ethnic', 'Birds', 'Affirmations - Heal your Life' and many more.

RedBubble calendars are printed using marvellous futuristic technologies, so complex I can’t go into them here, but I can tell you they are lovingly printed on a luscious 200gsm satin art paper at the striking size of A3 (that’s 297×420mm, or 11.69×16.54”).

They also have very handy wire binding so you can hang them from things like ‘hooks’ on exciting places like ‘walls’!

You can select your own start month, and order right into the future. Everything about them is brilliant, except you’ll have no excuse for missing your sister’s birthday any more!

The back cover of the calendar showing all 12 months' images

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Artemis and the girls

Ink sketch and W&N watercolours on a coffee back-ground – Nescafé instant, strong! – Bockingford 300gsm

As I sat on the lawn the other morning, enjoying our gorgeous summer weather (Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa), I decided to do a quick sketch of Artemis keeping a watchful eye on the girls as they scratch for titbits on the lawn. As long as they are happy, he won’t move, so he makes a perfect subject.

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