Normandy scene in watercolour and ink

This is a scene in Normandy that I sketched, painted in watercolour and outlined in ink. I really like the colours I used in this painting! 

Kids book

I created a story for a kids book which I'm still working on and thought it was time to add a few of my initial sketches:

And an illustration of a scene from the storyboard:

People watching on the tube

I like to sketch people (discreetly!) on the tube. I find it great practice and see many great characters on my commute. This is a sketch of lady I drew last week.

Rats!

We had some rats in our office recently and it gave me inspiration to draw. These are some of my many sketches:

This is a quick sketch of what the rats get up to when we aren't in the office:

Dolphins and Whales

I wanted to write about my recent holiday to Madeira. I have been on many cetacean watching boats in my life and I went on 4 in Funchal in the space of a week. I absolutely loved it, and want more! MORE!

I am going to write about the trips, about my discoveries from reading books, surfing the web and hopefully include videos, photos and my own drawings (if I'm brave enough).

So to start, I'd like to explain what I saw in Madeira. The company I used are http://www.rota-dos-cetaceos.pt/ I highly recommend using them for 4 reasons:
1) The staff are extremely friendly and knowledgeable
2) One of the skippers let me drive the boat on a trip
3) They're good at finding the cetaceans (with the help of the spotters high up on the mountains)
4) They use a Rib boat which is a great way to get close to the animals.
On the first trip we were lucky to see a Bryde Whale breach twice which we were told is a very rare sight. Unfortunately no one had their camera at the ready...but I can show you the size of the whale in comparison to a human! They're quite big.

On all our trips we saw spotted dolphins including babies. But the best trip of the week was the last day full day of my holiday, although I'm not sure if my boyfriend would agree as he got sea sick :-/

This is what I've wanted to see for years (not the sea sickness, but the bottlenose dolphins in particular). We had spotted and bottlenose dolphins surrounding the boat, surfing the waves, bow riding and jumping in unison. They got so close to the boat you could almost touch them and the bottlenose were swimming alongside the spotted (which surprised me). That day was particularly windy - the sea was very rough and we sat at the front and got absolutely soaked. Usually I wouldn't be happy to get soaked in cold salt water but it added to the atmosphere and experience and I think it made the dolphins more playful. The dolphins stayed with us for hours; it was a great end to a holiday, but it has made me yearn for more.

Spotted dolphin in comparison to a human:

Bottlenose in comparison to a human:

There aren't many places in Europe to see these majestic animals in the wild and I will never see them in captivity. Unfortunately when I was young I wasn't aware of the issues that captivity causes and I'm glad there is more education on it now, especially with the release of the movie The Cove (http://www.thecovemovie.com/). I have also been to the Azores on a dedicated whale/dolphin holiday (http://www.dolphinconnectionexperience.com/). This was a fantastic experience, hence my wanting to do it again. On this trip I actually "swam" with the dolphins ( I say swam, but I actually mean I got into the cold water and some dolphins swam by if I was lucky.) 

Watercolour beach house

I wanted to give this painting a cold feel as the photo I used as inspiration caught my eye due to how cold and hostile it looked. I spent a while adding extra bits to this painting and I'm concerned I may have overdone it, I know less is more but it's hard to keep away!