Brignall Banks

 Here in Teesdale we not only have some great open moorland walking but also some excellent woodland valleys which offer secluded and quiet days out. Today I headed along the A66 to the east to park up at Greta Bridge and walk this route along the area known as Brignall Banks. The shade of the trees made for cooler walking for the dogs. The late spring is the best time to find some of the beautiful woodland flora.

Brignall Old Church and Water Avens.

The other photos from this route are online on the gallery website: http://www.theteesdalegallery.co.uk/

A Moody walk

 There was time this afternoon to take in a couple of the Far Eastern Fells before meeting up witrh my brother for the evening. I had a reference or two to tick off on Arthur's Pike which is a fell easy to access from near Howtown. There was a band of rain to the north of us on the route but the skies were pretty dark and moody making for some interesting photographs like this one from Bonscale Pike.

Patches of sun broke through the cloud to the west and south and we did get the odd shower. Not all the best photos come from bright sunny days.

A day at the office

When I was out on Friday on Cronkley Fell I was using the camera to shoot a bit of video and managed to put a short clip together about my days out on the fells. It was quite difficult to film and sketch at the same time (who says men can't multi-task?) but the results were quite acceptable. I may put a few other clips together in the near future.

Evening on the Howgills

As part of this years Wainwright Society Challenge "The Best of the Rest" we had opted to walk the route up to Black Force. This route would be  new to us and loked interesting with the possibility of a bit of scrambling up alongside the gill. We chose to go over later in the day as the air would have been a bit cooler for the dogs. Also, after looking at the map I judged that the fells here would have been good to view the sun going down behind the Lake District Fells.

Not every thing went according to plan as you will see by visitng the full photo report on the website. Still, it was a great way to spend a couple of hours on some quiet fells, in fact we saw no one else during our time walking.

Penciling in

  The days that I spend in the gallery are never wasted. I try and use that time to upload sketches on to the website and answer emails etc. Once those chores are done its easy to pick up the pencil and draw up some more sketches for the project. Painting them here would be a bit impractical as the watercolour needs to be applied at just the right time and with a bit of concentration. Having to put a paintbrush down would be a bit, how shall I put it..... frustrating. The pencil sketches only take a matter of moments each to draw as they are the basic outline of the layout.

As busy as I was in the gallery today I still managed to work up about 24 drawings which now need to be scanned and uploaded onto the site before the get put onto the large pile of work to be coloured in.

 The added bonus to all this was that the very last customer of the day came in especially to see the Wainwrights in Colour and  he managed to choose one of the remaining fells for himself. That leaves just 14. all in all a good gallery day.

A Teesdale Treat

The pressure of getting work to get paintings completed has meant that my time has mostly been spent recently in the studio with just short local walks with the dogs, hardly the interesting stuff for blog material.

So today I considered getting out and about, a big walk over on the Lake District Fells was considered but instead I opted for a more local walk up into Upper Teesdale.

The dale boasts some really special flora and fauna and I was hoping to see some of it for myself. Cronkley Fell was the high point of my walk and on such a fine and warm spring day it was a joy to be out. I had timed this day just right as the rare Spring Gentian were in full bloom.

These delightful little plants are really only found in Britain here in Upper Teesdale and on the West Coast of Ireland. There were other highlights to the walk but the striking blue of the gentian made it special.

You can see the whole set of photographs from the day by visiting the website: http://www.theteesdalegallery.co.uk/

Spring Sun

There have been some cold nights recently with overnight tempreatures dropping to below freezing and with light sleety snow flurries today it felt as if winter had returned. By the time I got out for our walk there were some good patches of Spring sunshine which soon warmed up the day. As the clouds drifted quickly overhead we were treated to some nice patches of bright light worthy of a shot or two.

Bailey races the sun. Interesting here to see the Sycamore tree in full leaf where as the Ash trees on either side are still bare.

Bailey and Zeta.

Bailey's training progresses. Now around the local patch he works off-lead and is pretty good at obeying commands, he does try his luck every now and then just to keep me on my toes.

A Wildlife Day.

Recently I have been fully occupied with the Wainwright sketches which unfortunately means that I have not travelled far from home. I have had to make do with shorter walks for the dogs a couple of time a day. So today it was just in the local area of the house that we got a bit of fresh air. I make a habit of always taking the camera with me as you never know what is gong to pop up. Luckily for me I was giving the dogs a bit of close heel work when I spotted an adult Hare in an adjacent field to where we were. A bit of patience and he got closer and closer enabling me to get some great close-up photos of him. Great poses for future paintings.

On our later walk we were also fortunate to spot this line up of waders just sitting on a dry stone wall. Three Oystercatchers and a Redshank, even though they all breed hereabouts it was so unusual to cature them all in close proximity to each other.

All in all a good day for a bit of wildlife watching, and just on the doorstep too.

Fatma Dundar / Interview with Andy Beck

Back on the 17th Feb. 2010 I did a short interview for a friend of mine who is studying to become a journalist. The short film on the subject of The Wainrights in Colour is now complete and I have attached it here. Does this mean that I will be famous in Turkey now? (lol)