These days I like to try and make all my own greetings and birthday cards and make them very personal to the recipient. The paintings are of necessity pretty small so I have been working on trying to simplify my brush strokes and stop these little sketches being too “fussy”. You only have to look at the minimal amount of brush work in a lot of oriental art and yet see the essence of the subject is captured completely in a few strokes of ink. I thought to start with a few small birds and flowers practices.
These bird sketches actually haven’t scanned in too well. Perhaps they were a bit too small.
The next flower scan is much better and the colour far truer. I was quite pleased with this for a sort of 10 minute job and that would have been quicker but for waiting for the first layer of paint to dry on the butterfly.
Oh well, keep practicing!
Illustrated Country Diary 
It’s so thoughtful to choose a subject that fits who you’re making the card for! This is a good idea! I need to start making my cards more simple. They are so complex I either dread making them or even just buy a card since starting a detailed card seems so daunting!
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