This Midsummer week I have been working on a faerie image inspired by the wild rose bush which is in full flower outside my window...Celtic Rose first started as a presence I felt smiling from the rose bush while listening to the magical music of Neil H "Secrets of Faeries" especially the track "Secret Garden" - thank you Neil for your wonderful, inspiring music! So here she is standing at the window of her secret garden...the Celtic motif border was designed by stippling with fine-nib pen, and the image is coloured pencil.

As Midsummer approaches the grasses are growing tall and deep green in the wild corners of the garden, woven with a tapestry of wildflowers. Golden Buttercups, white Daisies, blue Germander Speedwell and pink Willowherb glimmer like a constellation of stars in the verdant shadows beneath the trees.

Here's "Celtic Oberon"...Oberon is a pen and ink design I drew a few years ago.   Recently  I've been designing  Celtic patterns by stippling with fine technical pen and olive green ink, combined some of my motifs with the Oberon drawing and coloured in Photoshop Elements.

My lovely crop of dandelions in the garden brought some new visitors this morning ; I was just making my breakfast cuppa and looked out to see a pair of Bullfinches feeding on the dandelion seedheads their beaks full of fluff as they chewed the seeds. Then a pair of Goldfinches joined them - such a lovely sight, I managed to get this photo when they flew to the dandelions which grow around my doorstep! The male Bullfinch is at top left and you can just see one of the Goldfinches peeking out behind a dwarf conifer.

An hour later: I just saw the male Bullfinch again and got another photo:

Still learning to use my new pen-tablet and Photoshop digital art techniques - I could not resist drawing this sketch, all drawn and coloured digitally...

I've just started dabbling with digital painting - I never realised how much FUN it can be! It's like painting with light instead of paint...My son had been wanting to try it but we didn't have a digital painting program, so I went and treated us to a small graphics tablet last week which came with Photoshop Elements as a starter package. I've been on the computer almost constantly since, learning how to use the program (my son is a great help as he's good at working out what to do, I got totally confused at first and couldn't remember how I did things!LOL) But here is one of my first speed-sketches, not refined yet but he wanted to come and say Hello! I used a mixture of traditional painting and digital - the background is a scan of traditionally painted textured ink layer, and I painted the creature on top digitally. This is the Weed Creature, whose hair and fur is composed of plant material, he can move around dropping seeds wherever he goes....

 In my garden I think he has a lot to do with the dandelions which are now in full flower like a golden swathe everywhere - I love dandelions, such sunny flowers and I keep them especially, they are a great early source of nectar for butterflies the first of which I saw here on 27th april (a Peacock and two Small Tortoishells).