German Shepherd

I've been working on this beautiful dog for a couple of weeks and just finished him. He's in pastel on Daler Murano paper.

Strange and wonderful world

It's always a challenge doing a self portrait using a mirror. As usual this has gone a bit wrong. I'm not entirely disappointed with it though. There was a programme on TV the other night called 'The Strange and Wonderful World of the Self Portrait', about self portrait painting through the ages, how artists have used it to present themselves and their ideas in different ways. Well I can assure you that this is not really how I want people to see me - I always draw myself 'warts and all', and concentrating on ones own fizzog for any length of time can be quite disconcerting when one gets to a certain age! But I just love drawing faces, and I'm the cheapest model I can get, so I will keep persevering!

My office

Just thought I'd show a pic of the tiny space I call my office. The pastels and pencils sit ready waiting for me to get a gap in my work so I can do some more on my animal portraits.

Horse

I've spent the last few weeks working on this portrait of a horse for my pet portrait course. It's painted in oil on gessoed hardboard 15x12 inches. I'm a bit fed up with oil painting now - it seems to take so long! (but that's just me!). Anyway the next one I do will be in good old pastel.

Tackley

Although the weather has been very cold it has been beautiful here - a bit like Narnia with frost staying on the trees and plants all day. On Sunday the sun came out for a while and we went for a drive to Banbury. All the way up on the Banbury Road I was going 'Wow!' - the countryside is breathtaking in Oxfordshire. I hadn't realised how beautiful this county is. And still very unspoilt (long may that continue). On the way back we decided to go to a little village called Tackley, as we'd heard it was nice. It was like going back in time about 100 years - a proper old-fashioned village with a few children playing on the pretty village green, a Christmas tree with lights waiting for a switching on ceremony that night. It was like a Midsomer Murders village without the murders! We went into the village's only pub, The Gardiner Arms and as we walked through the door we could hear the gentle bubble of conversation - no music or sport noise going on in the background. And to top it all the people in there were so nice and friendly. We whiled away an enjoyable couple of hours there and will definitely be returning!

A Winter Home

We decided to take a winter mooring quite on impulse. We only became continuous cruisers this August and had planned to carry on moving around the canals, stopping for two weeks at a time, throughout the winter. The biggest worry about the decision to move to Oxford was whether I'd be able to work. My Vodafone dongle works fine in most locations on the Thames, but I had heard the Oxford canal was not the best place for a good signal. However we now know we made the right choice. It's quite a novelty having a new area to explore - we enjoy driving around Oxfordshire - there are some beautiful villages. My dongle decided to co-operate, I have a signal with one bar, but it works fine and I haven't had a problem so far. We miss friends and mail is a bit of a problem - we have to go back to Teddington to pick it up. But we aren't too far away and have been back to see people. We're so glad that we decided to stay put for the winter - especially with the weather as it is now. We've got all the facilities we need nearby and two good pubs to boot!

Icy

Although we haven't had much snow here in Oxford, the weather is icy cold and the canal is frozen over. However so far we've managed to keep toasty warm on the boat with our coal fire and paraffin heater. We've learnt a new trick - if we leave the kettle on top of the fire during the day it almost boils and so I can have multiple cups of tea without using too much gas!