Silly Spring Bunnies

Rabbits have always been a favourite subject for me, the fleeting, nervous nature, their gentleness … my first pet.

I have been struggling a lot with my art recently, feeling I have some element of promise but a lot of the time, not knowing how to execute anything I have envisioned. Lack of talent, lack of inspiration? It turned out to be lack of guidance.

I have a range of watercolour books and tutorials which I have leaned on over the years, I was stabbing around in the dark and on the whole only making a mess. But I found an abstract art book by Kate Rebecca Leach and it totally smacked the fun back into painting for me.

Creative Abstract Watercolor is highly recommended if you’re struggling like I was, this book is full of very basic step-by-step tutorials on how to build a simple painting and dream up lots of embellishments to make it special. It’s a light, joyous read with gorgeous abstract illustrations, bold and proud in their simplicity.

These silly spring bunnies was the first painting I made inspired by the book and they’re to me, a lot more fun and interesting than anything I’ve made in a good while and actually feels creative and not a copy.

Grey Seal Youngster

Here is a quick little painting I did for my NemobySea blog, this painting was significant for me as this was the first time I ever photographed a seal at Minnis Bay. Seals are a rare sight along the coast where I am, so seeing or even sharing water space with them is very special.

One interesting thing to know about seal photography is if the seal is resting and looking directly at you — you’ve disturbed it. As much as you want to look into their big ocean eyes camera or phone in hand, try to resist and depend on us arty folk to try and evoke that wonder for you instead … you can check out further information about this painting here at NemobySea.

Brent Goose

It has been a glorious, cronking time for our migrants from Russia the brent goose, the smallest goose in Britain. One of the best places to see them in their hundreds on the South East coast of England is between Minnis Bay and Reculver Abbey, so I make a special pilgrimage to see them each day.

Flitting gracefully from the sea to the fields in huge flocks, they often fly directly overhead which is an exciting spectacle, and what gets me up early and brightens up the gloomy wintery mornings.

I’ve written about an unusual lone goose arriving in early October on my NemobySea blog.

Jolly Jelly Baubles

With the glitzy Christmas lights overhead, and the gloomy water below I remember those life forms which for me are like the baubles of the sea. Although I was stung pretty good, swimming in the bays around Thanet have given me the cosiest memories to reflect on over the winter.

I wrote a lot about the different jellyfish I encountered in the North Sea, you can find a lot more information about them on my NemobySea blog.

The Fulmar Return

This is the perfect time to be posting about these guys, for most of the month of November I’ve been scanning the cliffs looking out for one of my favourite coastal birds and, this very morning, what do you know — THEY ARE BACK!

These flying trapeze, tube-nosed beauties often get overlooked as they are mistaken for gulls, but are actually related to albatrosses. We’re very lucky to have them nest here in Birchington as it’s one of their last nesting sites until Essex.

I painted this fulmar two years ago and it was a significant challenge for me being a white subject matter on white paper. If you wanted to learn more about this painting and the fulmar in general, head on over to NemobySea.com where additionally you can see what I look like in a swim cap (spoiler: really dumb!).

Herring Gull Heads for my Nemo by Sea Project

I have painted many local sea birds for my little coastal project, I used to struggle with them especially the beaks not looking right, but as the years have gone on, they have become my biggest inspiration and a great love.

Looking at pictures online compared to donning a pair on binoculars and looking directly at them has been a big awakening for me, I can’t quite express how I feel when I observe birds this way and whilst they slide down the blog, hidden away, I thought I’d bring a small collection back here to talk about.

If you’d like to see the original post for this piece, and another gully head I painted in a similar style feel free to visit my Nemo by Sea blog.

Overcooked Spider, but Gully Glory

I started this scratchy spider a while ago, and you may have seen it teased in my newsletter, where I started being a little smudgier with my drawings. The spider I totally overworked but from the ruins I took away a more interesting shading technique.

I use an eraser to carve into the smudges creating more interesting positive and negative spaces, meaning I can give texture to fluffier beasts and intense highlights to smoother ones.

Yellow Wagtail Woes

I’ve seen the most incredible birds this side of the year, wheatears, avocets but the bird which set my heart on fire this month was the yellow wagtail. I can’t believe these birds exist in the UK and I can’t believe my eyes weren’t open until the ripe age of 33.

I wrote all about those little fellas on my NemobySea blog, and I wanted to do a pretty exciting piece of art to go with my enthusiasm, so inspired by my sketchy gulls I aimed for a similar styled wagtail — I don’t think it went well. It’s unfinished and probably will go unposted but I feel I atoned for my sketchy sins with a simpler (and much less time consuming) watercolour of him, check it out here!

Sketchy Gulls

There’s been a lot of gully goings on in my studio, lots of sketches, lots of paintings, tons of preparations. I’m hoping to make 2024 a big year for the gullies.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of love for our big birdies, they are mostly seen as pests. Tearing open bin bags, being loud and stealing food from infants in pushchairs, the horror! I hope to master their deceptively simple form and do great things for them advocacy wise around the coast, they deserve it.

Bitter Wanderings along the Coast

The winter has been brutal here on the South East coast of England, but there’s still some amazing things to see out there which I’ve documented on my NemobySea blog.

When I’m sitting in my hat and scarf inside my own home trying to keep warm, I often envy the plucky coastal birds hopping and skipping about, especially those happy go lucky redshanks which I’m excited to turn my brush to – stay tuned for that!

September Scribbles

I’ve got very little time for personal art these days with my other projects, but I really love drawing and painting rabbits. So I thought I’d indulge myself and work on these guys over the autumn months.

I transferred these scratchy HB pencil drawings using my Huion light pad (yes, it’s still going!!) onto light 140lb Canson watercolour paper with black FW acrylic ink.

Rabbit Pudding

Whilst waiting for my watercolour paper to be cut to size, I’ve been sketching away on a precious friends tabby cat Pudding, and a rabbit of course! I’m using just basic Staedtler HB’s and 4B pencils on recycled 80 gsm paper.

Scrappy Herring Gull Chicks

The herring gulls have hatched and they are running rampant on our rooftops down here! I’ve painted these little guys on scrappy bits of watercolour for my free coastal blog. They’ve probably all fledged by now, but you can catch a couple more of these paintings in full fuzzball form over on NemobySea.com if this larger juvenile gully doesn’t quite call to you.

Oddish Sculpture

It’s my sisters birthday (again) and I’m expected to do something arty. She’s picked up my childhood interest in Pokémon, her favourite being “oddish”, so naturally I guilted myself into making her a small clay sculpture. How hard could it be?

I started with a wire armature which I enveloped in masking tape. I’m using air drying clay, the usual materials at this stage is wire and aluminium foil but I could use anything to bulk out the frame since I’m not putting this thing in the oven. Masking tape is also nice since you can trim and prune it into any shape you like without worrying about crumpling it into a hard mass you can’t unravel.



The tricky thing about air drying clay is the dreaded cracking. Cracks can appear everywhere if you leave your sculpture out to dry naturally. You’ll need a very slow drying process to stop this from happening. So every time I finished working with the sculpture I’d cover it in a light plastic bag to restrict the air flow, to really slow down that drying. 

If cracks did appear I mitigated against them by mixing the air drying clay with water to make a kind of slurry which is referred to as “slip” and fill in the cracks and smooth it over.

After it had dried, I wanted to sand the piece down to a nice smooth finish, I picked up some hobbyist sandpapers for this job since regular sandpaper is way too rough. After sanding the larger scratches away I continued using finer and finer grit. I went from 200, 400, 600, 800 to finally 1000 grit sandpaper.



I had to get this sculpture done in little over a week, and made many mistakes. The first one being that after I finished sanding the sculpture, I applied a couple of base coats of gesso. I then made the big mistake of painting it without sealant. Gesso is not water resistant so what happened is the gesso undercoat started to sag, tear and bubble in a few areas.

Major disaster!

Ugly draft sculpture being gesso’d

I then had to meticulously remove all the paint and gesso undercoat with sandpaper and pliers. I really thought that was the end for dear oddish.

Ugly draft sculpture ready to be painted!

But I managed to remove all of the gesso somehow which is a testament to how strong and durable I made the sculpture, but after all that fussing I had to sand it down again, and reapplied the gesso primer and once dry, I then applied Mod Podge to seal the undercoat and finally move onto painting the thing!

 I painted this sculpture in simple acrylics, but since acrylics are essentially plastics you can easily overpaint whilst trying to blend colours directly onto the sculpture and making an uneven, blobby mess of things.



Yes, I am guilty of that too … you cannot sand down acrylics unless you want a patchy, shredded mess which is what happened to my draft sculpture. So you have to be very careful and skilled at blending colours, and acrylics are not my bag at all! I think doing this again I would use airbrushes to apply even coats of colour, using acrylics for small detailing.

After the hellish drama of painting the sculpture, with hours to go, I gave it two coats of Mod Podge (being careful not to make it clumpy) which gave it an excellent glassy sheen and presented it to my sister who unceremoniously fumbled it for a moment, thought I bought it from a shop and set it down, because lets face it — it was kinda crap.

I was the selfish one for indulging in this for my own sake, but I learned a lot from this and am very grateful her favourite Pokémon isn’t anything more complicated than a ball on legs, that would have showed me up for sure!

Convolvulus Hawk-Moth

Is there anything better than a hefty caterpillar? But what about that spike on its behind, is that something to be worried about?

Thankfully not! I won’t lie though, I was a little bummed that this wasn’t the caterpillar of the large elephant hawk moth, but Convolvulus was something I didn’t even know existed until I found these brown-green logs in the garden in late summer last year.

What all the hawk-moth caterpillars have in common is that horn on the end, it’s not dangerous, it’s in fact quite soft. Did I touch it? Of course — anything in the name of science and … art?

Boston Terrier

This little piece is a commemorative commission that was a joy and an honour to paint. I used hot pressed watercolour paper which has a unique glossy quality to the surface. I’m so happy with how this tiny little A5 came out.

Something really important to how I develop a piece now, especially a commission is to create multiple preliminary paintings, which is how I really narrowed down and simplified what I wanted to do with little miss Olive here.

I remember when I first started painting, and maybe 1 in 15 paintings would have something going for it … I’ve narrowed that gap quite a bit in the decade I’ve been painting all under my own guidance for better/worse.

“One must spoil as many canvases as one succeeds with.” — was the quote from Vincent van Gogh, 1889 which makes me feel better about my own art making process!

Painted in watercolour, acrylic inks, Brusho and white pigment.

Alpine Newt

This little guy was one of three alpine newts that I presented for a commission. I’ve included a little of the “behind the curtain” typical evening scene.

I used Brusho which is appears as a dust of heavily pigmented colour. You can sprinkle it in water, or mix it to produce super saturated colour.

The grey I used on this newt is extremely strong, and I was asked to strip out some of the grey, specifically in the tail area to get in some blue accenting. I thought this was impossible, Brusho is very stubborn, but with freshly boiled kettle water I was able to lift the colour and get a decent amount of blue in.

What a revelation! And then I found you can use extremely hot water to lift quite a lot of colour from paper, including regular watercolours and ink. It’s not perfect but as you can see, I got a really good result removing a dark colour.