Callanish Stones

A watercolour from one of my own photos. I love the atmosphere of the Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis and this was my attempt to capture it.

Rosberg

Pen and crayon - 1988
I have done many Formula One pictures, in various media, over the years. But this is one of my all-time favourites - Keke Rosberg the Formula One World Champion of 1982.

Birch bark

 

Tchaikovsky

 

Pencil, pastel and oil pastel

Biblical scene

 

Pencil and charcoal

Kathe Kolkowitz

 


Charcoal drawing
A copy of Kathe Kolkowitz's self-portrait. Kathe Kollwitz's imagery is marked by poverty stricken, sickly women who are barely able to care for or nourish their children.

Bridges

 



As with barns, I have drawn many dozens of bridges in pencil over the years. They, butterflies and trees are my favourite subjects. They have been the subject of many 'doodles' during meetings at work. I wonder what an art therapist would make of that.

Of these survivors at least one, the top one, and possibly the second, were drawn during Council committee meetings. Unusual though it may sound they did actually help me to pay attention to the proceedings. I doubt I ever went to a single meeting without doodling at least one butterfly somewhere on my papers.

John Denver

John Denver
Pencil, charcoal and pastel
January 1996

Coprinus fungi

Pencil sketch

Poppy

After Marjorie Blamey, the queen of flower artists.
Pen and crayon - 3rd September 1985

Augustus John

A mixed media - charcoal, pastel and pencil - drawn in Jan 1994.

Morse

Morse (John Thaw) had a most distinctive face and I was delighted with the way this pastel of him turned out when I attempted it in January 1995. I'm not sure now but it looks like a mixture of oil pastel and chalk pastel.

Head in Hands

Pastel January 1993 (9" x 9")
I had much admired this 1992 calendar picture by Nicola Burns wjen it hung in a colleague's office and he was kind enough to remember to give it to me when the year ended. I lost no time in copying it. Because her pastel strokes are so bold and the colours so exaggerated it was comparatively easy to attempt though I would not say it matched up to Nicola Burns' original.

Nikki Lauda

At the end of the 1980s I did a series in pen and felt tip of all the Formula One Champions to date; one for each year - a set of about 40.. This was Nikki Lauda's first World Championship year - 1975.

Kingfisher

Pen and coloured pencil, date unknown

Eagle Crag

A pencil sketch of Eagle Crag in the Lake District, 1993.

Nureyev

Rudolf Nureyev's foot.


Coloured pencil.

Bridges

Some pencil sketches from around 1989

Some Chap

One of those chaps who stands outside my cage every now and then!

My Partner

Don't you just love those eyes?
Gentle Lemur Hapalemur griseus

Canon Rawnsley

I have been fascinated by Canon Rawnsley since I was a child. At college I wrote a lengthy dissertation about him and researched a bibliography. Since he was a prolific writer that was quite some job. In addition to many books he was constantly writing to The Times and other newspapers and he was one of the most prolific sonnet writers in history, creating around 30,000 of them. (The fact that most of them were appalling is irrelevant.) I had a couple of mini-biographies of him published in magazines like the Lakeland Rmbler. I was delighted when, in the late 1960s, I came across a poster size picture of him and for many years it hung on my walls. This sketch was done from that poster.

Blue Irises

Pastel November 1995 (9" x 7")
Not directly copied but the idea for a series of Iris pastels that I did came from a painting by Linda Fay Powell. Like many of my works they appear unsigned because they have at some stage been cropped to fit a picture frame.