The puffins of Skomer

A couple of people have said to me you’ve not put much on the blog lately. It’s true, I keep meaning to update it then get tied up in other stuff… usually work! So I guess if I’m not on here very often you can take that as a good sign that I’m busy, hopefully busy painting , and not just faffing around as my wife calls it- obviously I’m not just faffing I’m mentally preparing myself.
Anyway so what have I been up to .

Well at the beginning of the summer, you may remember, I took a day trip to Skomer with friend and fellow falconer Vicky. Skomer is a nature reserve island just off the Pembrokshire coast. It’s a fantastic place to view many types of seabird, but I particularly wanted to see the puffins. It was a long day, but well worth it in terms of reference gathering, and also having the opportunity to observe these fascinating creatures.
On the day I took a lot of photos and did some pencil sketches (see earlier post )which I worked on when I got back to the studio, trying out different compositions until I came up with something I was happy with. It’s always difficult to narrow it down and pick one painting to do from a trip like that, I’ve got plenty of material to work with and I’m sure I will come back to it some time in the future and create another painting from it. Here's teh finished painting from the day.

If you’d like to find out more about skomer and it’s wildlife here’s some useful links
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southwest/nature/thingstodo/walks/pages/skomer3.shtml
http://www.skomer.co.uk/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skomer