I had a go at the Sky arts portrait of the week this morning. The model was Noel Fielding and it was fascinating to hear his conversation with the artist Bernadine Evaristo.

I started painting a portrait in watercolour this morning but it wasn’t going well so I played with some colour to brighten it up a bit!

Yesterday I went down Evening Hill to the area of Poole Harbour known as Whitley Lake. It’s a large shallow area of water where fishermen and oystercatchers dig for rag worm at low tide but when the tide is in it’s probably one of the busiest parts of the harbour where hundreds of board sailors Zoom about in the safe shallow water. The road at the edge of the harbour is lit by these decorative cast iron lamp posts which date back to 1895 although I suspect they have been re wired since then.

This morning I cycled to Evening Hill which is a viewpoint overlooking Poole Harbour and only a short ride from home. It was great to be outdoors painting again and this post marks a small milestone as it is my 366th consecutive post, well it is a leap year! In fact I have posted every day since 1 January 2019 but an internet glitch one day last May resulted in a missed post and the counter reset to zero.

The other challenge photo from Broadstone Art Society this week is a seascape, well a photo of the donkeys on Weymouth beach. I think I made it look like a cartoon!

This week’s portrait at Broadstone art society is of Lisa. This is from a photo I took during a shoot with Lisa in 2011 when I did more photography than art. Lisa often modelled for me when I did product photography for a couple of clothing companies.

I was following the Sky Arts portrait artist of the week this morning and attempted a quick portrait of Will Young. This was not my best portrait, I put his eyes too close together and gave him buck teeth! I enjoyed the program and may try again next week.

I joined an on line life drawing class this afternoon with Kenzo at Love Life Drawing. He is a very good tutor if you want to learn figure drawing and today was talking about line weight. As I like to draw with a pen I finished each model with time to spare so couldn’t resist adding a bit of colour. There was a female model as well but I shaded under her chin and it looked like a beard so I didn’t photograph that one!

This is my 7th portrait for NHS heroes. This time it is Jo, a nurse at Lilliput surgery. I met her when I went in for a routine blood test so I am glad she stuck a needle in me before I painted her portrait!