Playing conkers, the arty way

Saturday morning I woke up to a new point and shoot camera. Tye picked one up from Tesco's on his way back from work. I love it when it buys me flowers, but a digital camera is much-MUCH nicer!

So that afternoon we went to Hylands House Park, taking lots of pictures as we went for a nice walk, to get to know this new camera, and of course so I'll have some reference pictures to draw and paint from during the winter or these grey and horrible days like we've been having.

I also stuck some plastic baggies in my bag, so I could bring back leafs and feathers and other things I found. I came home with three of them filled with things to draw from.

Even though I like to work in pen/ink and watercolours, I'm not confident enough yet to start off that way, so before I grab my pen I'll do a quick sketch in pencil, just to see where I am and really look at the object:




And then I did my pen drawing, using a Micron pen this time, and added my Koh-i-Noor watercolours. I did two paintings: one on sketchbook pad so I could take it out, and one in my Moleskine large sketchbook that I reserve for pen and watercolour work. For some reason, the loose leaf page got a Dutch text, and the one in the book an English one... I hadn't even noticed until I saw the two next to each other.





I think drawing and painting them is a much nicer way to play than using these chestnuts for a game of conkers, that truth be told I had not even heard of before moving to the UK. Strange people, these Brits...... ;)