Sketching Progress?

I have recently been trying out using pastels for my sketching.

A new book that Margaret found for me has a whole section on drawing with pastels and this is based on one of the illustrations in those pages.

It is a sketch of one of the churches in Venice.

The second one here is also in pastel, with some pencil and ink thrown in for good measure as well.

It depicts the hillside village of St George in North Wales, based on a photo taken while we were visiting there some years ago.

The church in the centre of the picture is where Terry and Karen were married.

Another pastel effort was the view from our kitchen window of a kowhai tree on the left and a totara on the right. It illustrates the ease and simplicity of using pastels for this kind of drawing.

On an earlier occasion I had used pencil to sketch the same kowhai tree.

And below is a water-colour version of the same tree, this time with kereru resting in the branches, as they regularly do in the autumn, when they come down from their summer feeding-grounds in the bush around the mountain.
















Finally, another shot at white on black paper.

This is a building photographed by one of my grandchildren in their travels. I will have to find a better way of depicting grey skies!