Deciduous Summer Forest envelope Recently I turned some of my gouache sketches into envelopes with windows. Zazzle found the one above worth a TBA (today’s best). The collection of forest diary envelopes will be continued. for those who are looking for matching postage there is a collection of forest stamps as well.

I am always on the hunt for tree and forest drawings. It seems that the topic is inexhaustible. The artist Lisa Oxley has made a remarkable contribution from my point of view with her charcoal drawings of trees (drawing 2). I have never seen something like that before. There is a great balance between the abstract [...]

As long as there is no wind I still like to go out to sketch. I found a fairly dry place underneath the layers of beech foliage and decided to make notes of the forests grid of tree trunks. As I neglected the foliage this image looks like winter. I buy ink in bigger bottles [...]

Buy this sketch as postcard on Zazzle I needed two sessions to complete this gouache sketch in the forest diary. It is the mating season for the roe deers. Today I heard a roebuck jumping through the undergrowth coming nearer. Finally there he stood some 40 yards opposite of me staring curiously at the intruder. [...]

As a fan of George Rowlett I found my way to the website of the London Artspace Gallery some years ago. I want to point out to a marvelous online catalogue the gallery put up to feature the painter Ray Atkins. Plein air painting is alive still! Here is the link to Ray Atkins, The [...]

Buy this sketch on a postcard in my Zazzle store We are approaching the most boring time in the year from my perspective now. At the peak of summer there are not many colors in the landscape, all the different greens have changed to almost the same dull, saturated green. There is not much light [...]

buy art print pastel still life flea market on Zazzle For some time I studied light and shadow in a number of dry pastel paintings. Some old vessels bought on the flea market were arranged to still life that I lighted with a strong 1000 Watt light bulb to get dramatic shadows and strong lights. [...]

The small landscape study, a plein air sketch in gouache colors, was done for the postcard exchange going on within the Sketchercise group. It is fully in the tradition of the 18th century and later traditional expressions in landscape painting, preferably on oil. John Berger describes the traditional art of oil painting in his book [...]