The aroma of a freshly brewed coffee mingles with the chirping chorus of birds in a sun-kissed Algarve cafe. These feathered bandits are fearless, snatching crumbs from unsuspecting patrons. While my usual holiday sketches depict botanical illustrations or lovely landscapes, this Portuguese trip ignited a new passion for bird drawings: capturing the playful spirit of these cheeky creatures.

As a contemporary fine artist, I am constantly looking for new ways to inspire my work. A favourite sources of inspiration is nature. The beauty and diversity of the natural world can be a powerful source of creativity. Spending time in nature helps open my mind to new ideas, unexpected colour palettes and has the added advantage of encouraging positive mental wellbeing.

A real delight about visiting family in Portugal is the ability to regularly spend time at a favourite beach bar, sipping coffee, people watching and drawing what I see. This time it was the human forms of the bathing beauties that caught my eye and to my surprise I gained a new found confidence in life drawing. In three short days I saw my sketches improve, here’s how I did it...

Taking a sketchbook for a walk outside is a marvellous way to record details of the world around you.  Feeling the forms of a view through your fingertips, as the pencil moves across a page, gives a richer understanding of what you see.  As a practicing fine artist this is why I’ve always got a couple of Moleskine’s on the go.

Ever since I was little road trips have been a time for drawing and colouring in. In recent years I’ve taken this literally and used car passenger time for filling my Moleskine sketchbooks with views of the motorway. As a mixed media landscape artist it provides an opportunity to practice eye feasting and quick response drawing as views zoom by.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if drawing outside had one of those good for the soul type names like the rather trendy shinrin-yoku or “forest bathing”. Yes there’s the term en plein air (translation “in the open air”) which despite sounding somewhat romantic in French seems to fall a little short of soulful when translated into English.