A page from my journal about anniversaries. How things never stay the same, for example these tendrils of new growth over a log pile on Bookham Commons. I first drew these logs when they were freshly felled a year ago.

This is a picture I have made to use on a PowerPoint slide. It shows a mutant cocoa bush with three stems, and a common root and leaf system. It all has a meaning! I will use it in Ghana in a couple of weeks time.

The walk at Polesden Lacey is an elegant promenade with yew hedges that allowed the upper classes to walk 'in' the country side and enjoy the view whilst not leaving the formal gardens. Now its ususally busy with pensioners, families with young chilren in varying states of frsutration and me, cutting through on a run. I have done several versions of this view, and so far this is is my favourite.

Drawn from memory, this helmet with crown and goat in Leatherhead Parish Church is placed to one side of the aisle, but its high position and forbidding look seems to be sending some kind of grim warning to those gathered below. The Church is hundreds of years old, perhaps nearly a millenium, and I assume it has some historical meaning. It would fit well in a Dan Brown novel, but I prefer to think of it as a reminder from the local feudal Lord that he owns our bodies if not our souls....even if we may think we live in a town in the 21st century busy with office workers looking for a quick sandwich!

Ferns as bones

The bracken on Bookham Commons is losing its colour and shone out like white bones in the late afternoon light.

I was really struck by a picture by Jennifer Lawson at http://jenniferlawson.blogspot.com/2009/10/leaves-are-turning.html

This is my effort trying the same tecniques. I wish I had one quarter of Jennifer's ability but let's be positive, I had fun thinking about how I would do it, finding a suitable scene (Polesden Lacey house), making a sketch and then...it was a bit down hill from there! Perhaps if I had actually used my reference photo and taken care over the drawing...no, life's too short(at the moment anyway).

I couldn't resist posting the charcoal drawing of my parakeets - I prefer it in some ways to the finished picture. I won't repeat the blurb though!