A belated Happy New Year to you all! It would seem January has turned into an impromptu social media (and blog) break. Something that I hope has done me some good; providing a little space and time to think. Studio time had mostly been taken up with commercial projects anyway; with lots of new hand drawn pieces for advertising and some illustrated maps. I’ll look forward to sharing those with you soon!Any spare time has also been spent on a moderate studio reshuffle… trying to give more room for the extra equipment i’ve been using over the last year. That means having a Spring clean of every corner; being ruthless with those scraps of materials i’ll never get round to using.Hopefully my new layout will help productivity in the busiest times of the year!Signs of Spring have already been seen out of the studio window too. We just enjoyed a wonderful sunny weekend, getting out into the garden for the first time this year. The bulbs are emerging and the greenery returning. I expect we’ll also be heading out to one of our local National Trust properties soon to catch the snowdrop displays… and with that in mind I thought i’d work up a drawing of Mottisfont for myself between projects. Hello snowdrops!The sketch above was built up in Adobe Fresco using an Apple Pencil. It is very handy for pulling elements of the picture around and making adjustments to the composition. I can feature the grand house, some of the ancient twisted trees and a sweep of snowdrops around a burbling stream (I believe the original priory on the site was named from the spring/font still present in the grounds). Hope i’ll have some time to work this up and get the paints going again. At least with a re-jigged studio space it will be easier to have one of my own canvases on the go whilst i’m juggling other deadlines!
