Return from the north!

As promised, the fruits of my travels up in the frozen north! It was an amazing trip, if you've been enjoying snowy London then you'd love it here. The snow came up way past my ankles and with so much open space you could really appreciate its dramatic and magical effect. Also, my future-husband's parents own Jess, the cutest dog ever, who makes playing in the snow even more fun with her boundless enthusiasm.

It was a great time for taking lots of photos and doing sketches. This is my favourite, the view out over the fields at the bottom of the garden.

I also decided while I was there that I would make a little something for the cut click mail art exhibition. Hence the birth of this little chap, hiding in his envelope waiting to deliver the message in his beak. He's a continuation of the Christmas cards I made some time ago (remember those?) where the robin came to be used as an emblem of the postal service. Happily, the lovely people at cut click liked him so much they decided to include him the exhibition, which pleased me enormously.

Because I think it's important to know about what you are drawing, I did some observational studies of robins first (and I always find them fun to draw too, one of my favourite avian subjects!)

And last but not least, a small selection of photos from my travels. The snowy skyline is so dramatic with all the heavy clouds, and there were lots of sheep, horses and donkeys about to snap. You can see the full collection over at my recently created flickr page. Hope you've enjoyed my pictures, more to come soon!