As we come up to the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch can I recommend again this delightful book published 1989 and currently available very cheaply on the secondhand book market? It is full of wonderful illustrations by John, many in full colour and takes you through a whole year in your garden with ideas for […]
Birds
Scottish Wildlife print
£50 each +p&p 37 x 41 cm unmounted. There are quite a few architects’ plan drawers in the studio. Wide and shallow they could hold enormous sheets of paper and are ideal for the sketches and unmounted original watercolours they hold now. Every so often I delve into the drawers and emerge with some […]
Look what I found !
Remounting this lovely watercolour of Manx Shearwaters recently I came across a pencil sketch of coastal waters with seals and a small Hebridean style boat on the back. Which picture would you display? £450 in double mount 40 x 50 cm buy now from the shop.
Silent cliffs and restless water
“The contrast between silent cliffs and restless water offer powerful pictorial dynamics for an artist, as do the changes of light and shade and the air full of circling birds. The cliffs are a frontier between us and the horizon – to the seabirds, they are a necessary foothold on which to nest; a vertical […]
Wet weather wagtails
Here’s little ‘trotty’ wagtail who went in the rain, according to the poem by John Clare, the 19th Century poet known for his celebration of the English countryside. The Pied Wagtail is a highly distinctive black and white bird with a strutting walk and a tail constantly moving up and down. It’s ‘tittering, tottering’ motion […]
Beautiful Cranes
Thank you to the International Crane Foundation and the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum for featuring John on their latest webinar Cranes and Artists – a creative dance. Available to view on the ICF YouTube channel here. In his book Lines from Nature John wrote, ” At Hornborgasjon… is one of the great bird events […]
Quiet reflections
A Little Grebe paddles purposefully on a still lake. The bow-wave and wake reflect the light still in the evening sky. This is one of several similar pictures we still have capturing quiet moments on still water. The depiction of movement and stillness is quite special in my mind. John himself said, “Water puts all […]
Who are you looking at?
Gulls are known as bold creatures and the bane of many tourist hot-spots. This one is certainly giving us a hard stare, he may be about to fly off, but he’ll be back! Most birds are more wary, peering out from behind rocks, or deep inside vegetation, pictures may not show much of the physical […]
Fairy Tern
A delicate all-white Fairy Tern (Gygis alba) flies in an azure sky, somewhere over the Seychelles or Aldabra atoll. Bright sunlight makes its wings almost transparent. £130, 11 x 20 cm in A4 mount These little birds are relatively common across the tropical oceans of the world despite their daft parenting practices. The female lays […]
Chiffchaff, The Proud Songster
This little illustration was labelled “Proud Songster” and while not specifically mentioned in the poem of the same name by Thomas Hardy, John obviously felt that this Chiffchaff was doing its bit to fill our days with birdsong. Pen and wash drawing 13 x 11cm £100 available from Birdscapes Gallery One of the pleasures […]