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Getting Settled In A New Place

It’s been such a long time since I posted here on my blog. We’ve all been through quite a lot the past two years haven’t we? Well to add to my stress and at the same time happiness, we’ve moved from England to the Scottish Borders! Moving during a pandemic when they kept closing the borders was so stressful, but we’re moved now and getting settled in.

This is one of the first paintings I did at our new place, while standing in our back garden looking at the hills and sky. It’s a very small watercolor and I wrote the names of birds I could hear at the bottom while I painted.

We are still discovering just how beautiful our new area is, the Borders are wild and quiet, just what we like. The whole process of moving and settling in and creating new garden beds has and continues to, take lots of my time.

I unpacked paintings I hadn’t seen since I moved to England, has it been 6 years? More? They are like old familiar friends, and now many are hanging up where I can see them.

I will be focusing on getting a new printer set up and organizing proper selling of my prints and originals from my website. I’ve never had the chance to really do it right! Now I also have the fun little needle felted characters which I look forward to making available to buy soon.

Some new friends! I love creating these one of a kind characters, totally posable and unique!

I have a YouTube channel that has been sitting waiting also, so lately I’ve been adding videos so I can get back into it. Now with the house, gardens, new studio set up, new lands to explore, I’ll have lots to share there! Please go look, “Like” and hopefully “Subscribe” to follow my endeavours! Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnrD9rYXZ6KWYeDRElAvGyw I’ll get better at it as I go, I’m learning a new video editor called “ShotCut”.

Here I’m sketching along the river near our house, just up the valley. I need to get out to do this more often, the garden has been keeping us both busy!

I have really missed sharing here and can’t wait to get back to it. I have lots of new artwork to add to the Gallery too. What’s been holding me back in many areas is just figuring out how I want to redesign my website Galleries. I’m also having trouble receiving email notifications when someone leaves a comment! I need to find help for that issue with Word Press.

Finally I got my watercolors and color pencils set out, here I am working on an illustration for my new granddaughter, I’ll share more about that later!

So, has anyone missed me? What have you kept busy with during this pandemic and are you OK? I miss talking to the great people who leave comments for me here, you always inspire me to keep creating!

I’ll share some pictures below of our area and some more studies.

Sketching “Rubers Law” from the top of “Bonchester HIll”, and boy was it windy and cold! Very hard to draw, but look at that view!
This is a small unfinished gouache study of our back garden and byre (barn).
One of my illustration studies, I love the ‘old style’ like this and find drawing bugs really fun!
On a cold day, the sun is lighting up the hills far to the west. This is looking over our garden in the front where we are creating a small orchard.
There’s also new wildlife to discover here, this is a Green Hairstreak butterfly, with metallic green wings! It flew up out of nowhere when I was by the byre and settled on the Honesty I had planted. I was so excited!

Well that’s all for now, so much to share! Please don’t be shy, leave me a comment and I’ll check back here to reply to all. I hope you’re all keeping well, see you soon with another post or YouTube video!

January 26th, 2022 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Category: England + UK Posts, Felting, Illustration, Landscapes, Landscapes-Plein Air, Nature Photos, Nature Sketching + Painting -in the field | 12 comments