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Hello Folks! Well as they say it’s been a “dog’s age” since I’ve updated my blog. I left you with a study of the Groundhog or Woodchuck in August just before I left for my trip to England. Well I’ve made the journey and have been staying in Northumberland for a few months time. I’ve been hiking all over this beautiful region and taking tons of photos for painting references, but as you can see got way behind on my blog. Well, my focus has been off sketching and on absorbing the local views and country life. I also don’t have easy access to a scanner, so what I’ve finally figured out is how to photograph my sketchbook pages and edit them to brighten the contrast so you can see them better. With that said, I’ll have lots of posts coming up now with my sketches and lots of photography of the scenes and nature. Please add your email address to the little box in the right column to be notified of new posts.
 Buffalo Airport The little watercolor above was done while waiting for my flight at the Buffalo International Airport. I used a waterbrush and my favorite pan of colors that I put together myself. The little color notes at the bottom are for the Mourning Cloak Butterfly, I was looking for the right colors to do his wings. Just before I left Buffalo I got some great pictures of one that I wanted to do a sketch of.
 On the Mark Here you can see the ground crew guiding the jet in.
 Jet Sketch This is a very quick sketch in ink of the jet once it pulled up, they drove a box like cart up to it and this is what it hitched to. It was really hard to get the gentle swell of the outline of this jet, as always I did it for practice. It isn’t symetrical because the jet was at a tiny angle to me, not straight on. Then it started to move, so I scribbled faster!!
 Window Views When we were over Newark NJ the sun was setting, I had to do the sketch very quickly as we were preparing to land soon. When I departed for Scotland it was an all night flight, I landed in Edinburgh then was driven down to England. The little ink sketch is the window and it’s view. The pencil of the butterfly is what I did while we were flying from my photo of the Mourning Cloak.
In this post I bring you two owls, both are Barn Owls but look very different. The first is a sketch of a Barn Owl from the United States, the typical light heart shaped face and brown markings on the feathers. I think the same species is what you see in the UK, but theirs are slightly different in color or size. I need to research this further! (a note from me…I did put this up in a post back in August, but this shows it scanned in much clearer and the framed version.)
I used watersoluble graphite (graphitint) color pencils to do it, and a waterbrush to blend and make washes with the drawn lines. The property I like about watercolor type pencils is how you can leave the drawn lines if you like, it give a certain texture. If you don’t like that, just rub it a little more with the brush tip and it will all go to wash. The original sketch is only 2.5″ x 3.5″ big; it’s already been sold but I do have mini framed prints of it available, note cards and 8×10 handsigned prints.
 The original sketch is only 2.5″ x 3.5″ big; it’s already been sold but I do have mini framed prints available (shown below), note cards and 8×10 handsigned prints.
 This owl below is an Ashy Faced Barn Owl, an owl I never heard of until I visited the Kielder Water Bird of Prey Centre in Northumberland England. The owner let me take pictures of their owl, telling me it’s an uncommon bird even in England. It’s a young owl, you can see some of the down poking out from the feathers still. It’s dark face contrasted by it’s golden feathers were fascinating to look at! I looked it up in my two huge owl books and can’t find it in there, time to research this one more also!
This tiny painting was done exclusivly with watercolors and a tiny brush, it measures 2.5″ x 3″. The original has sold but I have tiny framed prints (shown below) available and note cards. Just email me to inquire: mary@marymcandrew.com
  
This is about my first day in England and the drive across the country through the Lake District to Ravenglass, West Cumbria. Forgive me for not having sketches for this entry, I kept busy with my camera recording what I saw, and being so exhausted it would have to suffice. Everywhere I looked, all was new to me and exciting, so the camera clicked away! Let me tell you about my travels with the photos below.
This first one is the view I had upon waking on my first day in England. It’s outside Alnwick in Northumberland, (Northeast England) a gorgeous countryside just bursting with fresh greens of all sorts and rolling hills. I had a hot cup of tea with a biscuit, parted the curtains and there you go…lovely. The stone structure across the street is a bus stop.
 The next picture shows a view from the other window, looking down the street. The mist hung heavy across all the houses in the tiny village, you’d never know there were very tall hills just behind the houses! I love the mystery in the roofs disappearing into the fog.  The next picture below is just outside the door, I went for a walk with my host Major Bullman and his very old dog “Bracken”. It felt good to shake the travel fog from my mind and breath some clean fresh air, I had to pinch myself to remind myself that I was really in England! haha…  Then my friend Gary and I set out to cross England to the Lake District. Along the way I saw amazing sights, beautiful lakes and views. The red fungus below is from our stop at Ulswater Lake; I haven’t tried to identify it yet, but would love to do a watercolor sketch of it. It had the neatest golden thread all over beneath it, like spun gold fibres, a spiderweb that perhaps had pollen all over it? Or spores from the fungus?  This is a picture of a VERY tired me (!!) at Ulswater. You can see how much rain the area had been getting, the little islands behind me were under water!  This below is Ulswater, it was placid and peaceful, the sun was just coming out in spotlights upon the distant hills…it was so dramatic and inspiring!  This is a breathtaking area that we stopped to take in the view at, a valley near Brotherswater on the way to Kirkstone Pass. I just couldn’t get over the prettiness of the view here, but it was getting late and we had far to travel still!  The view below is an unbelievable place, looking down the Kirkstone Pass towards Lake Windemere with the woodland around Hawkshead in the distance. If I remember right, the b+b and pub here are at the highest point in England. (I’ll check on that!) I joked with my friend that we should have a pint of beer here just because of this! But alas, we needed to press on, can you see the darkening of the sky?? We still needed to cross some mountains to reach Ravenglass on the West coast.
 Below is a stone wall, a stone wall you ask? Why? Well I found it interesting that as for many things, when you take the time to notice, there is an art and beauty to it. Gary explained to me that those who build the old style stone walls, with no mortar, all have their own style when they create. This one shows the rows of flat stones laid in between the big round ones, a mark of this wall makers. I snapped this picture out the window while Gary was asking directions!  We stopped here at a cafe parking lot with a great view, as you can see! Here we’re looking down Hartside Pass in Cumbria, towards the Solway Firth. You can see the Irish Sea and Scotland in the distance! That ribbon of road is where we would drive next…a long and winding road. You can just see a tiny white cottage on the right side, that is an open cottage for travelers who may get stuck in bad weather. It makes me wonder just how bad the weather gets here? But I like the idea of the shelter for travelers.  Well I guess that’s it for this entry! Next will be sketches and paintings from Muncaster Castle in Ravenglass!
 This is a 5″ x 5″ little sketch I did with oil pastels from a magazine cover about Northumberland, England. My friend in Northumberland sent me these great magazines so I could get to know the area a little better, as I’ll be visiting it in Sept this year. The difficulty in the sketch was just that it was so small, but I want to do more on a 5″x5″ format so I can get a collection that would look nice hanging together. To do details I used a razorblade to cut angles on the ends of some of my crayons…and used it also to scratch off details on the house. You can especially see it where I signed my initials.
Hope you like it, I can’t wait to get there personally and so lots of nature studies and landscapes!
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