Last weekend I visited Clifton Hall Farm near Rugby, with friends from The Wildlife Art Society.
The farmers have worked hard to encourage wildlife in many ways, and we found a lovely lake amongst fields and woodland, with a pair of mute swans nesting on an island.
The nest was a huge pile of branches, possibly twelve or more feet across, piled high above the water level.
We thought we could glimpse an egg, so there may be more to come before they are incubated. Hopefully we can visit later to see if there are any cygnets.




This week I used the reference to demonstrate in pastels for the Oadby Society of Artists in Leicester, who were a very nice, interested group.
They were just trying out a new audio-visual system with a giant screen, so I was the guinea-pig to be "filmed" with a headset, but it all seemed to go well.

The pastel drawing went quite reasonably on the evening, but I wanted to do a couple more hours work the next day before I was satisfied with the results.