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Gillian Cooke

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That’s a great charcoal sketch Bill. I have a love of painting and drawing standing stones. I live in Orkney and have painted the Ring of Brodgar and Stenness Standing stones many times. If you’re interested some of them are on the gallery! 
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Gillian Cooke

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What a pretty girl  Gill
Sylvia Evans on 02/02/2023 17:45:46
She takes after her mother Sylvia 🤣🤭
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xxBillxx xxDowniexx

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That’s a great charcoal sketch Bill. I have a love of painting and drawing standing stones. I live in Orkney and have painted the Ring of Brodgar and Stenness Standing stones many times. If you’re interested some of them are on the gallery! 
Gillian Cooke on 02/02/2023 21:51:37
Thank you. I think I overworked it, but it was good practice. I discovered you can get stone-like effects with charcoal sticks by doing sweeping strokes up or down with a broad edge. Were they overlap you get interesting relief-like patterns. I'll go and have a look at your standing stones now!
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xxBillxx xxDowniexx

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That’s a great charcoal sketch Bill. I have a love of painting and drawing standing stones. I live in Orkney and have painted the Ring of Brodgar and Stenness Standing stones many times. If you’re interested some of them are on the gallery! 
Gillian Cooke on 02/02/2023 21:51:37
I had a look at your standing stones paintings and I have to say I loved them. The one with the scud cloud and snow was my favourite. You seem to have a real feeling for stones and the rugged Orkney landscape - there certainly seem to be a lot. My brother was friends with the artist George Garson, who lived on Orkney and painted and wrote about it. 
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Gillian Cooke

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Here are a couple of charcoal sketches Bill
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xxBillxx xxDowniexx

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Oh I like these, especially the top one. The stone is very imposing - they make a good centrepiece for a composition, as they have a presence, almost like a person. I like how you did the clouds too. They needed to be bold. Does the second one have a bit of colour in it? It looks brown behind the stones. Each stone has its own character and you've shown that very well.  I didn't realise there were so many menhirs and dolmens left behind by the ancient Britons until I read a book by an American, M. Scott Peck. He and his wife did a tour of Britain looking for standing stones and he wrote about it inIn Search of Stones. It's a fascinating read.
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Gillian Cooke

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Thanks Bill the second sketch is actually soft pastel pencils not charcoal.  I also have tinted charcoal pencils which you might like. The book sounds interesting! 

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Both good sketches, Gillian. The 'stand-alone' has a lovely depth to it.
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xxBillxx xxDowniexx

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Thanks Bill the second sketch is actually soft pastel pencils not charcoal.  I also have tinted charcoal pencils which you might like. The book sounds interesting! 
Gillian Cooke on 04/02/2023 04:07:12
It is and I've often dipped into it for inspiration. Peck wrote The Road Less Travelled, about the psychology of spiritual growth and he was a free-thinker with a broad range of interests. Anyway, here's today's sketch (although I did it a few months ago). This is a lake in Canada, from an old photograph.
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Paul (Dixie) Dean

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Great sketches of the standing stones Gillian , that a superb sketch Bill and very skilfully done .  A few weeks back I bought some very cheap refillable brush they were been sold off at four for a pound , I decided to fill them with a watery black paint and see what I could do with then first one just doodling the townscape was one I stared with a brush ages ago and never finished off , now I have . I will make the paint thicker and experiment sketching with them or doing the initial sketch for a painting. 
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xxBillxx xxDowniexx

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These are lovely sketches Paul. I particularly like the second one, which has a definite Lowryesque feel. I find urban scenes difficult, so I admire what you've achieved with it. All those fine graduations of grey can easily turn into an untidy mess, but I get the definite sense of a compact 19th or early 20th Century Lancashire mill town. Well done. Thanks for your appreciation of my own sketch. Sometimes it just works out, as if it was meant, and I think this was one of those. 

Denise Cat

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That is a super sketch Bill, very eye-catching. Great doodles Paul.
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