Natural Collection | Southwold

Southwold

Christmas trip to southwold, here is some watercolours, using ink and bleach in some as well. 

Natural Collection | Ink and bleach

Ink and bleach 

I started to experiment with bleach and ink, using the shells as my inspiration. 

Natural Collection | Agate

Agate 

These are some quick watercolour pieces I did of agate crystal slices. 

Natural Collection | shells

shells 

I used photoshop to edit some of my previous designs into a pattern.

Natural Collection | Tropical fish

Tropical Fish 

While doing some research on tropical plants for my university project, I came across tropical fish and decided to give it a go and do some watercolour painting of some of the most interesting fish. The ocean is something I love to research so it fits nicely with my shell pieces. I mainly stuck to similar colour themed fish, looking at the yellow and blue pallet. 

Natural collection | Friends Spain trip

Spain

One of my house mates recently went on a trip to Spain. While she was out there she collected some interesting stuff on the beach. She brought back some really nice pieces of sea pottery and although there was not that many full shells she found some really pretty piece of shell. She even found a starfish which i thought was really interesting as I have never found any of these before. 

I add one of my shell drawings with it as I had one left of the blue mussels. I hope to do some work based on the pieces she brought back next. 

Natural collection | Eaton park Norwich

Eaton park Norwich 

On my walk to Eaton park i made a small collection of some things I found on the way. Autumn is a really nice time to fine bright leaves and seeds. I did a quick watercolour of one leaf i found. 

Natural collection | tropical flowers

Tropical flowers

In a recent university project I am looking at tropical flowers and leaves for a print pattern motif. I did some drawings of some of the tropical flowers both in fineliner and watercolour. It would be good to try some more exotic natural collection drawings, 

Natural collection | Hunstanton

Hunstanton

This quick watercolour is based on more of the blue muscle shells that I found at Hunstanton. The shells are broken and chipped. The shell collection has grown massively since last year. 

Natural collection | Ibiza

Ibiza


I found my very first sea urchins when i went on holiday this year, although I maybe have accidentally crushed one. I did some quick watercolour painting of the broken sections of sea urchin is still had left. The work isn't very detailed but I really like painting the pieces so they are arranged on the page. 

Im really inspired by a recent book i have brought as well. The cabinet of natural curiosities by Albertus Seba is a massive book filled with so many natural illustrations that he did in the 18th century. Its filled with animals and plants, as well as my favourite which is shells and coral. There is an amazing page filled with illustrations of all the different sea urchin shells.  

Natural collection | Ibiza

Ibiza 

i spent a week in ibiza at the start of september, we were in a hotel just outside Sante Eulalia. The nearest beach I found happened to be really good for collecting things like sea glass and pottery, also found a couple of sea urchins shells which I had never seen before. 

I found lots of different colours of sea glass as well as the more common green colour, blue was my favourite. I had never found sea pottery with patterns on either so I was quite excited about that. The most common shells in ibiza seemed to be a orange shell. I found it more fun doing watercolour illustrations of the shards of broken shell then the full shells I found. 

I like to keep a collection of beaches in bottles and jars to remind me of all the different shells and interesting things I could find on that beach.

Natural collection | Isle of Islay

Isle of Islay 

Recently i have started to collect nature from different locations, I have started to get my family to help and on a recent trip to the Isle of Islay my brother collected lots of natural objects from the beaches in the island. There were bits of sea glass and shells as well as a pretty interesting crab claw. 

Natural collection | Southword

Southwold

The beach is by far my favourite place to be, different beaches offer different inspiration. On a windy day of the summer I went to Southwold determined to find some sea glass. My day wasn't very successful in collecting the sea glass but i did find some other interesting bits and pieces along the coast line.

Natural collection | Great Yarmouth

Great Yarmouth 

On a spontaneous roadtrip to great yarmouth one sunny day I did a quick collection and sketch of what was around me. This was a very sandy beach with not many shells but a lot of sea weed and driftwood.

Natural collection | Hunstanton beach

Hunstanton beach

Although this is not the prettiest or cleanest beach my family stopped off and had a quick look at what it was like. There was lots of shells to collect, many blue mussels all over the beach, there were bits of shell as well as complete ones. 

I also did some watercolour painting of the smaller parts of shell.

Natural collection | Aldeburgh beach

Aldeburgh beach 

On another day of the holidays I went to Aldeburgh beach, this beach has almost no sand and is all stones. I didn't find anything interesting at first but then my brother came across this crabs leg which I thought would be quite fun to try and paint. 

Natural collection | Wells beach

Wells beach

'Wells next the sea' is an unusual beach as it has a pine forest right next to the beach, although I was at the beach there was lots of interesting things to collect from the forest. This was mainly a pine forest, I wanted to find mushrooms but unfortunately there wasn't any to be seen, I did collect from interesting things instead though.

I was inspired so did some quick watercolour paintings of some of my findings.

Natural collection | Rhodes greece

Rhodes greece

Travelling  is always a great way to experience and see new things. I took my drawing equipment on holiday with me to see what i could be inspired by. Shells always inspire me but unfortunately the beach in my resort had hardly any, fortunately the man made beach had some very interesting stones and sea glass to collect.

I loved the different flowers and trees that the hotel had and i found myself using parts of the palm trees as a drawing surface for a bit of fun.

Natural collection | My garden

Natural collection

I set myself a summer project to keep me inspired, i decided i wanted to look at collecting natural and interesting things from different places. I like the fact that each place I visit will have different and unique plants and shells etc. 

My garden