This image is a photo I took, then changed in Adobe Photoshop using the 'fresco' tool.I love the undulating across the columns. When drawing on site I often loose track of the shadows and get lost in the detail. Photos like these mean I can go home and take a step back from the wind and grass.
Penshaw Hill itself is nestled amongst other hills stretching across Weardale. This is the view east across Herrington Park. If I was stood a little higher up Penshaw hill I could have added the North Sea in the far distance.
The monument has no roof, and the sky can be seen in peculiar shapes between the apertures of the columns and the entablature (that means the top bit - more about that later).
Penshaw Monument stands on a hill 136 metres above sea level, and is itself 20 metres high. I am just over 1.5 metres tall. So, whenever I visit, pulling up in the car at the bottom of the hill, walking up the hill and standing at the monuments feet, I am awed by it's size.
The pillars of Penshaw Monument are made of sandstone, which, it is rumoured, were taken from a nearby Roman dam. The whole monument is coated in coal dust which has accumulated over the years since it was erected in 1844.
In Eire most of the shop signs in the villages are still hand-painted. This I love, because in the UK most of the signs are printed on plastic using the same lettering & fake colours (you know what I mean) that we see everywhere. There's a pub nestled amongst about six other pubs in the village downs from my dad's house, and painted on the sign is a rabbit. I love that rabbit.
I'm home from our holidays and I'm back at work, the kids are back to school and it's time to get back into painting. I had no idea that it is the routine I have at home that allows me time for my art. While travelling with the kids, visiting family, day trips and picnics there's been little if no time to myself and for drawing or painting. I thought it would be otherwise, I imagined afternoons sketching while the children played, but we had a full calender and the five weeks have flown past.
Tomorrow I'm taking my two beautiful children to see their Gangan in County Limerick, Eire. He lives in a cottage high up the side of a hill, overlooking a valley and the hills beyond. Once there, Dad and I will stand at the kitchen window, or lean on the bottom half of the front door from about 6am onwards watching the valley wake up. He shares the hill with hares, a fox, swallows, pied wagtails, a rat, and loads of other LBJs (in birding terms this means 'little brown jobs'- relating to all small, quick, flitting blurred things you glimpse). 
