Something that will hopefully cheer you at the start of a wet week here in the UK. This is taken from a walk some time ago by the River Severn here in Gloucestershire. I took a photograph and then created a line drawing. My plan, such as it is, is to convert the line drawing into a colour image digitally without losing the atmospheric feel of the original. There are times when I manage to kill if off completely, which to me is a side effect of digital imagery. Much of it loses its ‘feel’. Hopefully not the case here, … Continue reading Severn Meadow

With the new lockdown imminent then one of the outlets for my “Books for Children Project” will be closed. The books have been available at the Longfield shops in Cheltenham and Stroud and as these are considered non-essential shops I’m assuming that they will be closed from this coming Thursday. So I’m making extra efforts to sell the books from my website. You can buy them from here using PayPal and I will send your ten pound donation to Longfield, or you can get in touch and arrange to pay them direct. Longfield do a brilliant job looking after people … Continue reading Drawing a cat in a hat at speed…

This is one of many landscapes I’ve been doing over the past few months. This is on the very west coast of Vancouver Island not far from Tofino. This is a large drawing and in it’s first stage at present, just Indian ink on paper. From here it can either get better or worse. If it gets worse I generally just rip it up. Over faffing can foul it up, and I am prone to over faffing, both in life and in what might be laughingly called art. We visited this area some years ago now but the memory of … Continue reading Vancouver Island

On a day when the clocks go back here in the UK here’s what we have to look forward to when they go forward again. These bluebells are in Derbyshire in the Derwent Valley. On a grey day we forget how bright things can be and without sounding ‘preachy’ how bright they can again. Nope! That sounded ‘preachy’, but there it is. Continue reading Bluebells

What sort of question is that to put to a sixteen year old? It was at the time of my school French aural examination and the examiner put this question to me just to test how I would pronounce the French word for umbrella. ( Look it up! ) I was non-plussed, searching my limited head dictionary for the right word, or more to the point, what the hell he was talking about. He understood my plight and looked at me eagerly willing me to both understand the question and to speak the official answer. A sixteen year old, even … Continue reading What would you use in the rain?

This was the polite way that I was told that I had drawn the short straw when I worked for the printers. In actual fact I did not mind in the least. I got the clients that no-one else wanted, or would prefer not to deal with. In the ten years that I worked at the print company my cartoon work was mainly on hold, but I collected more inspiration there than in many previous years. The gentleman had a slight midlands ‘brummie’ burr to his voice and he asked me if we could do Christmas cards and could I … Continue reading “Looks like you get the eccentrics”

I used to work for a printing company in Gloucester, it was a career break from my former trade which was drawing cartoons for a living. I was hired to sell print, very kind of them to have the faith in me to think that I could do it. One of my clients at the company was the Cathedral in Gloucester. They proved to be brilliant clients in every respect. Apart from being a joy to work with ( and unlike some clients I always considered that I worked with them rather than for them ) I had the joy … Continue reading Gargoyles in Gloucester, a tidy job.

This time Robin and I chose Shab Hill which has superb views over Gloucestershire and is close to the A417 which is due to be diverted soon to solve a log jam of traffic that builds up at the Air Balloon roundabout. A huge new double carriageway is due to cross some outstanding countryside. We took a walk over some of it and then recorded Robin and the song: “Digging up the road”. We just did a couple of the verses, the first one is the original. The original song only had two verses, so I wrote some more for … Continue reading Digging up the road… jam tomorrow?

This is the first of hopefully a few little videos, this one done about a week ago down at the area of the Severn here in the UK, where the river meets the start of the sea and where the canal that takes ships from the river up to Gloucester Docks begins. The Docks here at Sharpness are still used but very few freight ships go up the canal to Gloucester, the waterway being used more these days for pleasure craft. It makes for a good walk and has a great mix of industrial and countryside. I particularly like the … Continue reading Donkeys and Sharpness

This is the title of one of my most popular blogs, very strange. So jumping on the bandwagon and latching on to it’s popularity here are a couple of drawings from a short film I did a couple of years ago to accompany a song called ” Do you want us to win the war?” Can’t remember the particular lyrics but I suppose it must be about a loyal bovine, so here are the drawings. What will they make of this in Afghanistan? Someone from there dropped into the site just the other day. If it was you: “Hello”. Continue reading Cows sleep standing up.