Why it is fantastic to have a Buddleia growing in your garden.

I have just spent a good half hour in my garden watching the butterflies and bees collect nectar from my buddleia.  Taking photos of course.  I now feel inspired and spending that time outside with nature has given my mood a good boost.  I thought you might like to see my pictures.  I was fascinated that is for sure and wanted to try to spread some of the joy I gained from taking them.  When watching them I noticed just how uninterested they were of me and how focused they were on their task in hand.  Perhaps I can learn from that and be a little more focused on my own tasks in life and stop overthinking things, which I can be prone to do.   Although I was taking photos I did stop and just watch them and just be present, very relaxing.  I took almost 40 pictures, it is more difficult than you might think to get a good crisp close up image, they kept moving just as I pressed the button.  It was as if they knew lol Don't worry I will not make you look at all 40 photos, here are some of my favourites.

All my photographs featured today were taken with my Fujifilm FinePix S5800 digital bridge camera.  I have certainly got a lot of inspiration for my art work today taking these pictures :) So the moral of this post is this. Spending just a small amount of time with nature can be relaxing and really lift your spirits, as well as give inspiration.  I hope you have enjoyed seeing these pictures and come back to see what else I get up to.

Art challenge 29 faces as set by Ayala art

Ok time to breath some life back into my blog again.  There is a 29 faces art challenge going on at Ayala arts blog here There is also a facebook page here.  If you are arty why not join in.  I aim do a blog post daily to chart my progress, which is not easy but this will be my personal challenge for the first 29 days in September. I have been drawing and painting a lot of faces anyway so why not.  Here is one to get us warmed up in readiness for the 29 faces challenge starting on the 1st of September.

would you like to see me paint this? 

find below the link to my video

or scroll below to keep reading :) 

This face was painted using Prima watercolours that I purchased from a fantastic company with fantastic customer service.  Seriously I cannot recommend them enough.  I put in an order a while back (why I keep going back to them) I had accidentally done a duplicate on one of the stencils I was ordering.  Rather than just processing my order they emailed me to make sure it was not an error and that I actually wanted two of the same stencil.  Well I didn't so I thanked them for noticing, they amended my order and gave me a refund.  How cool is that? The other reason I purchase regularly from them is they offer free delivery on orders over £20 (correct at time of writing 26th august 2016) I cannot think of any other company with such a low threshold for delivery.  So what is the company I hear you ask.  Well it is "Thats crafty"  and they can be found here