the faraway towns

why, hello there (:

i just got back from london this afternoon after a 5 hour drive - which actually wasn't so bad, i watched beatles & jimi hendrix videos on my ipod & played along with the pop master quiz on radio 2. yes, i know i'm a dork.

(i'm not quite sure how i'm going to space out my posts on london. i think i may do a post about kew gardens, then a sight-seeing one & then one with all my purchases, mainly i just don't want to bombard you all with lots of pictures!)

i had a really lovely time in london with the family, even if sharing a room with the brother practically drove me insane! it was very much a whirlwind visit, i didn't quite get to do everything that i would've liked as obviously we had to do things that everyone wanted to do, but it really was awesome! on our first full day, we went to kew gardens to meet up with some of my mum's family who live in london. i hadn't realised how large kew gardens was, it's a really beautiful place too & quite inspiring. seeing as my project title for art is the natural world, i took a few photos that i thought i could maybe use in my sketchbook.

(i apologise in advance, these aren't going to be very good)

i actually don't know why i took so many close-up pictures of leaves & flowers. i mean, don't get me wrong they're quite pretty things, but with this project i was looking forward to drawing water, & landscapes & sunsets & things.

okay, so i'm digressing.

these flowers were lovely, but most of my photographs of them suck. this was about the only decent one.

sometimes when i see lovely pieces of old ironwork like this i think i should've chosen the built environment as my project title, because i just find this kind of this really beautiful.

in the wider gardens, we saw a couple of peacocks which was actually kind of amazing as i didn't realise there were animals there. i'm quite pleased with this photo, i was only about 6 feet away from him! there's actually a series of photographs of the other peacock sitting on the ground, where throughout five pictures i get closer & closer to the bird because i was scared it was going to either leave or get up & run at me!

i really liked the lily pond they had there too, i'm doing claude monet as one of my research artists for this project so i wanted to take a few pictures of my own so that i could attempt my own stylised version of his iconic artwork.