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At long last I am getting around to doing all the 'bits and bobs' to my website I have been meaning to do for a long time but just haven't had time.
For more indepth details about myself and my work as an animal portrait artist please.... view my blog
 So here is the 'all about me' bit 
I work full time with the Forestry Commission in the stunning Royal Forest of Dean. I had been based in the office for nearly four and a half years but took a major detour from office life and joined the tariff team early this year. I now rarely visit our offices based in Coleford and instead spend my days outside in the wonderful woodland throughout our district. I am still learning my new job and have two wonderful teachers, Dave 'the font of all knowledge' Cooper and Andrew 'the oracle' Davis. If they can't answer my constant questions I doubt there is an answer. Between them they have clocked up 50 years work with the Commission and have worked in every aspect of Forestry. Being an outdoors girl (they tell me I'm a tomboy) I love my new job, I fall over, get wet, constantly lose my way with my very bad sense of direction, but I'm sure I've made the right choice and am hoping to be taking on a degree in the very near future.
Me with Dave, Cass and Tess under a very large and old beech tree.
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This is where we have been working recently, it is a wood full of oak trees (photo below left) and is very much like a fairy woodland, this area is on my boyfriend's beat (he is a Forester with the Forestry Commission) Also in the same area, we came across this little deer in the middle, it spent a few minutes staring at us as though we were to be studied and then walked off into the wood, the photo on the right shows Dave and Andrew with another Forestry employee with over 30 years on the Commission, the local legend himself Garry Trigg (known as Trigger to the whole of the Forest) and Tess and Cass the dogs who sometimes have a worse sense of direction than me, they are 15 years old though and have gone to work every single day!!!
  
What a great job!!! How can you beat that?!?! We are also in big boar country. There is an ever growing population of these animals and they have featured on Bill Oddie's Autumn Watch programme which was filmed here in this area but I have yet to get a photograph of these (not sure if I'll be brave enough to take photos if I meet a boar, I may just run off!!!) but if I do I will update this page for you all to see.
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Meet the family
Well that's the job bit explained, now for the rest.... You will soon tell by the photos below, that I am a bit animal mad. My boyfriend has a large and ever growing population of chickens, pheasants, ducks and geese whilst I have 'a few' rabbits and guinea pigs to keep me busy....meet some of the family!!! See Zac featuring in my work as a pet portrait artist and animal portrait artist and also in the dog gallery as another of my portraits in pencil pieces.
  
  
I have yet to introduce the rest of the clan which includes:
a few pheasants including the temminks tragopan shown above (who now have three young chicks), silvers, goldens, Lady Amhursts, Swinnoes, Mikados, Himilayon Monals, Elliotts and Blue-earreds,
about 150 chickens including faverolle salmons, silver appenzellers, gold appenzellers, old english pheasant fowl, rhode island reds, bantoms, silkies, ixworth, silver sussex, light sussex, speckled sussex, belgian d'anver, ancona, silver spangled hamburgs, gold and silver campines to name but a few,
4 guinea fowl who are the best guard dogs ever, if anyone or anything visits our garden we soon know about it as they sound the alarm,
and we did have a pair of peacocks named Fanny and Elvis (Elvis loved Fanny but unfortunately it was not recipricated) and as with everything else which comes to live with us, they died of old age.
  
The three above all run around together, Willy and Rag the dutch rabbits and Pickle the guinea pig. Pickle spends all his time in the garden trying to break into the next pen to see Treacle his girlfriend.
  
BB the grey rabbit is a bit of a bully to other furry pets but his friend is Rock Steady Freddie a Rhode Island Red cockeral. Bob and Treacle the guinea pig are together, Bob tries to attack every other rabbit but he loves Treacle and they snuggle up to each other.
  
Sooty and Sweep the guinea pigs are brothers and squabble all day long. All of my little friends live in a heated shed with a television (mainly for me), electricity and even curtains!!! Introducing Gypsy who is our rescue terrier, she is thankfully chicken friendly and digs huge holes all over our lawn and one of my two fishtanks of tropical fish, I have discus, kribensis (which have bred so many times I have a legion of them now filling both tanks), loaches, tetras, angle fish, raphael and spotted catfish, barbs and glass catfish (I can't remember anymore!)
Shown above from left to right are our 6 toulouse geese (3 pairs), a mixed breed gander called Pierre and George and Mildred, the embden goose and gander. Sid Vicious, another embden gander declined to pose with the others and is hidden behind the bush....
so here he is. Sid is a little moody, sometimes he completely ignores me but give him a piece of bread and he'll eat from my hand.
...And not forgetting all the ducks, we have 4 aylesbury ducks, 3 rouens, an abacot ranger, 5 khaki campbells, 3 white campbells, 5 muscovys and 3 cayugas, and believe it or not most of our feathered friends have names!!!
All in all a full house, more photos to follow!!!
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And now the art stuff....
I took Art at college and that was the end of my education in the subject, I was not that taken with the history side of things and wanted to produce life-like images, not at all the impressionist was I and still am not, I really don't understand a single dot on a page having some meaning as it simply is a dot on a page to me, I am besotted with animals and nature so it is logical that they feature in most of my art and that I wanted to work as a pet portrait artist, the local scenery is just amazing and sets the mood for all things artistic. I chose to use pencils as I feel they give the most realistic true to life finished work, I am not taken with painting too much as it is a little too loose for my style and after using graphite pencils for years the logical step was to use coloured pencils for my art. I usually sit outside on my garden bench in warm weather and work on my latest portraits in pencil commission with a view down to our orchard feeling like Lady of the Manor. It just doesn't get better.
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