Winter Blessings

'Blessed Bee'

Lots of new work this week, as I desperately create for the Artisan Fair in Chagford on Saturday! All these are available as A5 prints, and the originals will come to the fair to sell.

 'The Holly and The Ivy'

 'Bless This Land of My Soul'

'Wise Women'

Made into lovely cards on recycled brown paper.

Cards are £2 each or 5 for £8

Meanwhile I continue to walk this land, finding new treasures and small beauties each time.

These large beauties are my boys, waiting for hay on this iron hard morning.

The small boys, across the valley are growing up, cheeky and playful.

And the view across the valley, ever changing yet remaining constant. This land is home.

This land that I love......

Mostly, I have been walking.

In the sleet,

the driving rain,

the blustery winds

and the brief windows of clear icy light between the storms.

Even at night.

I have been nightwalking often as autumn turned to winter. Last week's full moon rendered the moors as bright as day, and a sharp frost made the ground twinkle underfoot in the flickering midnight light.

We have watched the stars, and the stones, and slowly, slowly an immense collaborative project between Steve and me is unfolding.

There is new work, but it goes slowly too. Above is a painting of the Leigh Bridge Crossing.

Below is the painting that I am currently working on :

'The Woods Maiden and her King'

I'll stop there for now, and save the Christmas news for the next post! (In a day or two, I promise)

 Rain, rain and more rain. That's all there is to say about August. What a washout for the school holidays. Everytime I ride my horse, I get soaked through :(

Instead, I have been huddled in my cosy studio, listening to the rain drumming on the roof, painting away at summery landscape sketches.

I'm offering them for sale here for a few days, as they are, before I frame them up and take them to the gallery. They are both A4 ink and watercolour.

Prints will be available by later today too (£14 each)

 'Below Langaford Bridge'

£ 60 (unframed)

'Walland Hill'

£75

And the winner.....

 

71 entries! 71 small pieces of folded paper went into the bowl, and the owl - daughter  chose one with eyes tight shut. The name that came out , and the new owner of the Beltane hare is Sage Jay Crosby.

Because there were so many entries, and it felt mean to only choose one winner (and because the wolf boy wanted a turn at picking a name from the bowl) we decided to choose a runner up, who will receive a print of the Beltane Hare. The second name out is Lyra.

Both of you need to contact me by email (dbarlowart@aol.com) and send me your details so I can get your gifts in the post. 

Thankyou so much for entering and spreading the word :)

'Stiniel Down'

10/5/12

ink and watercolour

I've got some new large work to show you next time, once I have good photos, but in the meantime I managed to do another local landscape. The weekly landscape has fallen by the wayside at the moment, but I'm trying to get back on track!

Local Landscapes Week 6

Meldon   15/2/12

Local Landscapes Week 5

 Across Beechlands to Gidleigh Woods

Ink and watercolour

7/2/12

Sorry, this is a rather poor photograph of this painting. These are just slightly too large for my A4 scanner, and so I grabbed a photo in the halflight this morning. 

The picture below is another I have been working on this week

Local landscapes Week 4

Cranbrook Castle from Weeke Down  23/1/12

Watercolour

I've found myself fascinated by winter trees recently, in particular the way that massed winter trees look, so I've been playing around a lot with ways to capture this. Interestingly, the top watercolour took all of 10 minutes to do (and most of that was waiting for the paint to dry) while this stylised version below took about 3 hours, and was probably at least my fourth attempt at it!

Landscapes week 3

 Frosty Morning at Higher Weddicott  17/1/12

Watercolour and ink

Phew, finally caught myself up to the right week!

Landscapes Week 2

 Kestor from Nattadon 15/1/12

Ink and watercolour

Local Landscapes Week 1

 

'Kestor 10/1/12 '

graphite, gouache and ink on Ingres paper

I mentioned new year resolutions in my previous post, when I showed you the ernormous reading list. Now I'm going to introduce the other major resolution I've made! 

I need to brush up my landscape sketching skills, so I have decide to do a local landscape drawing or painting each week this year. They are not intended to be major works of art, simply an exercise for me, where I can be freer and more experimental with materials if I want.

Todays effort was this, a granite outcrop with a lot of strata lines.

For now, I will have to work from photos, as the weather is not conducive to 'plein air' painting, though I hope I might be able to get out and about with my sketchbook a bit more often this year.