In chronological order… the balcony of our first hostel in Buenos Aires.  This was the first time I’d used my new Artist’s Grade watercolours so it was all a bit haphazard.

The beach at Puerto Madryn on the east coast.  Was being blown by a very strong wind and a lot of sand.

Random bits and bobs, including one of the long-distance buses everyone uses to get around here, and various people as they came and went on the Puerto Madryn prom.

My boy Rich with a rather long face, and the Andean mountain range overlooking El Chalten..

Striated mountains seen from the Los Condores viewpoint in El Chalten, if you look in the opposite direction to Monte Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre.  I loved these mountains.

Experiments with my new dip pen.

A tree characteristic of the lower levels of the Andes around here.  They seem half dead, though still lovely.  When hiking you come across whole fields of their blanched spidery skeletons.. I must find out why.

The paper is Fabriano 5 Liscia (hot-pressed) 210gsm 50% cotton paper – good for watercolours.

And a doodle of Tony Benn, who we went to see answering audience questions while there.  The crazy dog on the left is by my secretly artistic boyfriend.

You can click to enlarge them if you like.

I’ve now moved onto the wonderful book Artistic Anatomy, by Dr Paul Richer, first published in 1889.  Through this I’m learning about the skeleton (again I’ve begun with the head); there’s so much you don’t realise you’re registering when you view a person.  I’ve decided, as per the beliefs of Da Vinci and the great figure-drawers of the past, that to really portray the human form you need to understand how it’s constructed, which muscles move when, etc.  So the plan is to get through the whole book, alongside others such as the brilliant Robert B. Hale books on learning to draw from the great masters.  Not a short exercise but better than using corpses like back in the day.