Sketching in Scotland: Day 6

Today was another fantastic day. We spent the morning on a wildlife 4x4 tour around Ardnamurchan and saw some incredible sights. It was a very inspiring day- much more to come on this in the next week or so as there are so many things I want to draw from the day!

Tonight is our final evening in Ardnamurchan. It's very sad to be leaving but I'm looking forward to seeing all of our lovely animals again, and we already have plans for the next visit!

To celebrate in style, we lit the fire bowl and toasted marshmallows, and our drinks, to a wonderful holiday.

Sketching in Scotland: Day 5

Today we visited a beautiful beach called Ardtoe. Here are some sketches from on the beach before I was too distracted by climbing on the rocks!

Sketching in Scotland: Day 4

Today has been my favourite day of the holiday by far. 

We paid a visit to the Ardshealach Smokehouse and stocked up on all sorts of delicious treats for tonight's supper. If you are a foodie, I definitely recommend checking out their website.

We then pottered on the beach whilst munching on some whiskey fudge from the smokehouse. I took the opportunity for some very speedy sketching here.

After that I had an amazing lunch at Glenuig Inn- an enormous plate of local prawns followed by homemade ice cream. Hours later, I'm still so full that I'm struggling to move!

When we visited Ardnamurchan two years ago, we came across a venison shop selling deer skulls complete with their magnificent antlers. We bought two but I've always regretted not getting one of my own. The venison shop was our first stop but nobody was there. We had a phone call from a man named Fergie later in the day who told us he would be at the shop for us to stop by on our way back from lunch.

Fergie was one of those amazing one-off characters you know you'll never forget. He had a really good long chat with us and told us that his son (who runs the hotel and shop) is about to shoot in The Commonwealth Games and wanted to know all about where the Scottish side of our family were from. He was really pleased that we already owned some of the stag skulls from our previous visit, and even more so that we will be displaying them as they are and not cutting them up (apparently lots of people turn them into walking stick handles which I think is a crime!).

Fergie then told us that he is an accordion player and will be featured on BBC Alba on Thursday at 9.00pm. We asked for his full name so we could look up his music, at which point he stopped us leaving and whipped out a CD from his car boot which he very kindly gave to us.

Little did we know we'd been talking to Fergie 'The Ceilidh King' MacDonald!

PS. Have eaten the smokehouse supper since writing this and the Smoked Scottish Dunlop is to die for!

Sketching in Scotland: Day 3

Today consisted of a visit to the local wildlife hide followed by another relaxed afternoon during which I completed my online photography course.

I quickly sketched one of the small islands visible from the hide. A boat came past just as I was finishing so I added it at the last minute.

There were about twenty seals on the rocks in front of us. My favourite was a young one who decided it was much more fun to swim and jump than nap with the others! I could only see them clearly with the help of binoculars and a camera lens, so this was a very speedy sketch.

Sketching in Scotland: Day 2

Today has been a bit of a showery day, so I decided to get the watercolours out and paint the sunset from one of yesterday's photos. 

The saying that if you wait five minutes the weather will change in Scotland is very appropriate for Ardnamurchan! By this afternoon the weather was much sunnier again, so I was back outside sketching. Our cottage is right on the edge of a sea loch so we have our own private rocky beach with benches and a fire bowl. 

Sketching in Scotland: Day 1

I'm currently on holiday in Ardnamurchan, which is the most westerly point of the British Mainland. It's stunningly beautiful and the perfect place for some sketching.

Today was a relaxed day of shopping, eating and pottering by the rocky beach.

Back to Blogging!

It's been an embarrassingly long time since my last blog post because it has been such a busy few months.

As you may remember from previous posts, Mum and I had our first joint exhibition together during April/May. 'A Celebration of Nature' at Worcester Cathedral was a fantastic success and neither of us could have predicted how wonderful it was going to be. We had over 200 friends, family and supporters joining us for the private view evening and many more visitors during the course of the exhibition.

I made a time-lapse video of the exhibition set-up and Harvey kindly filmed the private view evening for us. Take a look below:

We had a fantastic team of volunteers supporting us during the exhibition and Mum and I also manned the exhibition for some of the time that it was open. On the Bank Holiday Monday I set up my easel and worked on a new painting of a raven.

Thank you once again to everyone who helped us make the exhibition possible and to all of our friends and family who supported us!

Once the exhibition had finished we then had a mad rush to pack orders, tidy the workshop and house ready for our open weekend. Lots of visitors came to collect their artwork and see where we work. We had homemade lemonade and lots of cakes on standby and I'm pleased to say there was nothing left by the Sunday evening!

My poor sketchbook hasn't been getting as much attention as it deserves because of all this, but I have included some sketches made during quiet moments in the Chapter House. I was practising my insects from the Reader's Digest 'Field Guide to the Butterflies & other Insects of Britain'. This is a fantastic resources book, and if you can get your hands on an older edition it has a much nicer cover.