My beautiful Celtic Hazel artwork - part of my Celtic Tree Calendar collection - plus I take a deeper dive into hazel folklore, history, tales and hazel meaning...

Exploring self-expression in art and creating meaningful drawings…

​​The objective of this particular drawing lesson is to understand that art is expressive and personal…

…and NOT an exercise in technical drawing.

So that you will feel confident that, actually, you ARE an artist.

Celtic knotwork art - Humanity & Kindness...

I created this colourful Celtic knotwork design on the theme of humanity and kindness and based on a traditional Celtic knotwork design -

I actually created it in the first weeks of lockdown (late-March 2020) for a book on kindness, 'Be Kind' by Tecassia Publishing - thinking about how we're all interconnected across the whole world and how we need to cultivate our kindness and patience towards each other so that we can all live together effectively, especially in those most difficult moments when we sometimes feel anything but patient and kind...
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My Celtic goose art plus goose myth & meaning explored...

The farmyard goose was once widespread across Britain and Ireland – equally so its wild ancestor, the Greylag Goose.

The name is thought to relate to the fact that this grey goose ‘lagged’ behind other geese at migration time and was one of the last to leave for migration. Another suggestion is that it was originally the ‘grey-legged goose’ but since its legs aren’t grey, but orange, I feel this theory is unlikely.

Even in the earliest times, geese were seen as special. In Ancient Egypt, the goose “was the Sun as it emerged from the primeval egg” (Albert Champdour, Le Livre des Morts) – a solar bird-god that laid the golden egg (the sun) each morning.

Pharoahs who identified with the sun were shown with their souls in the shape of a goose. And when a new pharaoh was proclaimed, four wild geese were released to the four corners of the Earth to tell the gods of the new earthly ruler. So the Egyptians saw the goose as a messenger between heaven and earth.

A rare opportunity to purchase one of my beautiful original wildlife drawings - something special to cherish or a personal and thoughtful way to mark a celebration for a loved one...
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• One-off original drawings (not prints)
• Each comes with a mount and backing board in soft white
• Overall size 10 x 8" (to fit a 10 x 8" frame)
• Artwork size is approximately 8 x 6" (19.5cm x 14cm)
• Cream card with pen/marker drawings

My Celtic Holly art - plus a look at holly folklore, tales, meaning & symbolism...

Basic colour wheel colour theory explained – keeping it simple – put the ideas into practice straight away.

Do people keep referring to the colour wheel or colour theory without explaining what it is, why it’s helpful, or what it’s got to do with you? …confusing, right?

Only until it’s explained properly! When you understand basic colour wheel ideas, it’s like you’ve been let into a special artists’ club and get to find out all the colour secrets!

I didn’t properly understand about the artist’s colour wheel until I started training in interior design… it was a big ‘a-ha’ moment and suddenly everything ‘clicked’…

That’s what I want to share with you – how basic colour wheel colour theory can improve your art!

We’ll look together at the basic colour wheel – we’ll understand what it’s for and understand some simple colour terms before going on to see how basic colour wheel colour theory can help us choose colours for our drawings and artworks.

In this blog post, we’ll cover:

• Understanding the colour wheel
• Understanding ‘warm’ and ‘cool’ colours and why they’re important
• Using the colour wheel
• How colour mixing works
• Mixing colours for drawing

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My Celtic hare art – plus I take a dive into hare meaning, myth, folklore, stories, and hare symbolism…

The hare is one of my favourite wild animals – and I’m lucky that I get to see them relatively often as they seem to love the large flat fields we have here in the east of Yorkshire.

I’ve watched them boxing in fields in March, loping across grassy stretches, hunkering down with a flick of the ear, and one summer, I was fortunate enough to regularly see a family of young leverets playing in the early mornings in a field near my home.

Mysterious, swift, wild, otherworldly… the hare is one of our most cherished countryside animals – and far more than just a big rabbit!

If you watch a hare run, it’s almost impossible to mistake her for a rabbit – a hare runs more like a dog or deer, where a rabbit simply hops.

The hare has the ​air of something fleeting – fleet of foot, but also something ephemeral – a wildness that can’t be tamed, a creature that’s not quite of this world…

So the myths, stories and folklore around the beautiful hare are in many ways perfectly understandable and only add to our intrigue with this creature of the wild as we try to entice her through our stories to become a part of our world.
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My Celtic oak art – plus oak meaning, symbolism, myth and stories…

The oak is traditionally seen as the ‘King of the Forest’ or the ‘Father of Trees’. It’s a native British tree that at one time was incredibly widespread – in the time of King Henry VIII one third of Britain was covered in oak forests.

The trees are slow growing - producing hard, valuable timber – and can live to over 700 years old, sometimes 1000 years or more.

The oak is called ‘a garden and a country’ as it provides a whole ecosystem of life from small ferns and other plants growing in its nooks and crannies to fungi, lichen and (rarely) mistletoe – as well as being home to numerous insects, birds, and even small mammals.

Acorns are said to be ‘man’s first food’ in the legends of several different cultures – and humans have used this tree for building, furniture, healing, and food, as well as the tree having symbolic, social, and cultural importance throughout the ages.

Let’s explore our relationship with the oak tree…

Learn how to draw anything by seeking out shapes - basic drawing skills to help beginners get started drawing quickly and easily...

I want to get you started drawing by sketching nature. The objective of the drawing lesson in this blog post is to understand how to sketch out the basic shapes of your drawing so that your drawing is recognisable and accurate.

This is important because although art doesn’t have to look ‘realistic’ you do want your drawing to look recognisable (unless you choose to play with the shapes and proportions for style and effect)…

It’s important not to give your viewer the sensation that “there’s just something wrong about it” which can often be the case when we get things even subtly wrong.