Thank you to someone for adding me to the sketchbook blog site.  I have at last managed to get my first piece done in the sketch book. The title page and inside cover are now completed, for which I am truly grateful as I was beginning to wonder if they ever would be done. I now must start on the next pages as I need to get it in the post soon to Doreen. The title page is meant to look like a stained glass window, so I deliberately kept to only three colours but used two shades of each. It is a hybrid between celtic design and art nouveau, the pattern being based on  highly stylised plants. The centre represents a daffodil with its buds , then the red flowers in the next circle are tulips with the celtic knot corners representing shamrocks. the pattern is coloured in polychromus coloured pencil as the piece of paper I chose to do it on was too thin for paint. I did it on a separate sheet because I didn't want to put compass holes in the sketch book page.

I have a lot of pictures to put up in the next while . They will fall into two main categories, photos of plants, birds, insects etc. and art work. The photos will be divided into walks with Ben dog and garden plants. The art work will also be divided into RBGE Course pieces, Sketchbook Exchange pieces and other artwork.

Well its been a long time since I managed to put anything on this blog, as can be seen I have added to the title. This is to allow me to add sketchbook and other art work making it a more comprehensive and inclusive blog than just walking Ben Dog which is how it started. I shall be adding work from the Botanical Illustration Course I am doing through distance learning with Edinburgh Botanic Gardens and also from the Sketchbook Exchange of which I am a member. I shall also continue with comments and pictures of nature and garden as the seasons change.

As this has been such a wet, windy ,cold "summer" I have not posted anything for a long time. It has however been a marvelous year for the plants which grow in the hedgerows and along the roadsides so I have been busy with the camera recording them as they came into flower. I have also managed to get a few insects as well. There have not been very many butterflies about. I am going to put a selection of the plants which have flowered this summer up so that the huge variety can be appreciated,and enjoyed.

Ducks

The other day Ben and I  were out for our walk when two ducks flew up out of the ditch beside the road, they went so fast I barely had time to see them. The sparrow hawk has been round the bird feeders again lately and a magpie has discovered it can get on the bird table which is a bit of a nuisance. The cold weather has halted the fast growth and we still have some daffodils and the cowslips are only coming into their best. The poor horse chestnut trees got a real bashing in the gales lately with leaves and flowers blown off them, the lane looked as if it was covered in confetti with all the bits of leaf and blackthorn flowers. This last two or three days we have had heavy showers of hail which made it look as if it had snowed, with bright sunshine in between but no warmth as the wind has been so cold.

April 2012

I have not managed to keep my blogs up in the last couple of months as all the pictures I took were stuck on a camera and there they stayed what ever I did. This means that I have missed a few of the early flowers and the opening of the horse chestnut buds. I have now managed to get a few pictures of primroses and cowslips and the first few flowers on the chestnut. The blackthorn has been lovely but is now going over.as the leaves begin to show on the hawthorn and privet. the weather was so mild early that we had a real spurt of growth but it turned much colder and things have slowed down again to more normal growth for the time of year.

Correction

I have a correction to make as I mistakenly called the sparrow hawk in the last post a male, it is a female and the one which visited last winter was a young male. The small birds are very busy at the feeders as it has been quite a lot colder the last few days. the bright clear days are lovely after all the dull dark ones we have had.