Our grandsons Emmet and Cillian asked me if they could have a painting of Corfe Castle station for their bedroom so I added this special visitor to the Swanage Railway. Happy to say the boys love it.

Ginny bought me a book about fashion illustration for Christmas. It’s fascinating to see a different approach to drawing figures that concentrates on clothing and accessories. Here are a couple of the exercises from the book that starts with shoes and bags.

Self portrait from a photo taken by Barry at the art society party.m Thanks Barry. I was going to add some pen but I am having second thoughts. Should I add pen or not?

Out with Bournemouth and Poole urban sketchers at the Russel Cotes museum this morning. We had a good turnout with over a dozen sketchers. The museum was very festive with carols played on the piano and staff dressed in Victorian costumes. Watercolour isn’t allowed in the museum so I used a pen and water brush to create some tone on one and pencil on another.

The Royal Academy summer exhibition was fascinating, sometimes inspiring, sometimes challenging and often puzzling as in how on earth did that get accepted! There wasn’t time to sketch on the day but I did take some photos to work from later.

A cold windy day at Broadstone Christmas market today for our pop up art gallery. I managed a quick sketch before my hands seized up. Hopefully we (Broadstone Art Society) raised some useful funds for our chosen charity Mosaic which helps bereaved children.

This is the painting that wasn’t accepted for the Wild exhibition at the Gallery Upstairs, not sure why the curator didn’t like it but I will save it for our exhibition in February.

I am pleased to say that my painting “Dolphins off Old Harry rocks” has been selected for the exhibition “Wild” at the Gallery Upstairs in Poole starting on Friday. I entered two paintings convinced that the other one would be accepted!.