Skip to main content

Isle of Skye

Back home after a fleeting visit to the Isle of Skye.  A beautiful atmospheric place with weather (this week) that changed every 15 mins.  We experienced snow, hail, mist, sun and rain - often all in one hour.  On the Thursday we were - as featured on the previous post - walking in snow and mist and the next day we woke to snow flurries but by 2.00 I was sat sketching on the hillside in full sun !

A friend of ours had booked a comfortable cottage on the side of a hill overlooking Carbost and invited us to join him for a few days.


panoramic view from our cottage
It was an action packed week for my friends -  various walks and climbs every day regardless of the weather so undeterred by the snow covered peaks sometimes totally obscurred by cloud but a promising forcast on the Friday he and his intrepid pals including Dr Fred went off for an adventure climbing in the Cuillin.  I diligently stayed at home to do some college work.  I dont want to mislead any readers... there is no way I go do the adventurous activities Dr Fred and his crazy pals get up to - I just provide tea and cake when necessary... I sat in the window and watched the weather come and go across the amazing view and I did manage to embroider some moth work but eventually the sun was too much to miss so I headed up the hill to explore.   The views just got more and more magnificent with the snow covered Cuillin always present dominating the scene and the sun was getting better by the minute.

panoramic across the bay 

 Eventually I found a nice spot to sit by the loch with my sketch book and paints -  enjoying the calm blues skies and fluffy clouds scudding along the horizon.

10 min watercolour and ink partial view of bay - the skies were clouding over..
It was a very clear day and I could easily ake out the outer Hebrides in the far distance. I climbed a small rise to investigate the Dun Beag Broch.




sunny side of broch


start of ink drwing of sunny side of broch
It was windy on top of the Broch - which is quite a substantial ruin given that it is at least two and half thousand years old - but the views were stunning so I took a couple of panoramic shots and then sat and drew for a little while - it was very peaceful.  None of the sketches were much to write home about let alone blog but I've included a couple just to prove its not all about lazing in the sun on hill and loch sides!!!!!






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful.   There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...
1 comment
Read more

The Blue Dot

Excellent evening spent at the first Blue Dot festival held at Jodrell Bank.  Clever use of the radio telescope as back drop for the main stage... there were some major teething issues which hopefully will addressed if this event happens again - mainly access and parking.. it was a nightmare approach to the festival and fortunately as we were only doing one night we decided to ditch the car and chose to walk the last mile and half into the site... what a relief as if we had queued we would most certainly missed Public Service Broadcasting which was one of the reasons we were going.. anyway we caught them and then enjoyed fantastic set by Underworld - danced much of the night away in the rain - my trusty solfest poncho almost kept me dry.. it was a splendid evening and the telescope looked brilliant when lit up when it got dark. There was a rather fab "installation" called a luminarium, lack of site information - another hiccup meant we were really lucky to catch it just ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Goodbye Dissertation!!!

The dissertation is finished...  it took me ages to do all the detail stuff Harvard referencing ect... the simplest tasks were starting to drive me mad!! I cant believe how long it took me to work out how to number pages excluding the first two pages aagghhhh...  I suppose I should be grateful that its not like the olden days where you had to get it typed and bound before hand in - this essay has been a hard slog, a subject which I felt was interesting - how the digital explosion is ruining traditional creative methods turned into a fairly unexciting - pretty boring unexceptional topic!  there will never be a next time but my advice is think of something funky - does Danny Boyle like garden Gnomes - Racoon meets Lady Gaga - anything that might surprise you but not too grown up!! I have worked hard and will be rewarded with a mid grade because there is no passion in this essay - the hard slog is evident as is the lack of enthusiasm - C'est la vie you cant win them all....
Post a Comment
Read more