castle – Graeme Skinner

Another doodle

Graeme Skinner — Sun, 25 May 2025 07:44:10 +0000

Another quick doodle*, this time of Brougham Castle…

*Just working out what is working and what doesn’t

Brougham Castle

Graeme Skinner — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:59:24 +0000

I paused briefly (it was too cold to linger) by Brougham Castle, Penrith, this morning as the Moon looked good behind it illuminating the river. I ended up having to put this image together from three different photographs to get close to what I actually saw.

Bloomin’ Weather

Graeme Skinner — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 10:30:42 +0000

This weekend we had a friend staying with us from Brazil, so we offered to show her around the area, of course the Cumbrian weather did its best to try and dampen our spirits but it failed So here are a few photographs of our whistle stop tour of Cumbria –

As you can see, at the end of the tour the weather was perfect

Guardian

Graeme Skinner — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:11:56 +0000

Okay, a little background first, some time ago on the evil that is Facebook (which I obviously visit most days ;-)) John Howe posted a photograph with the comment “Speaking of dragons… it wouldn’t take a lot to transform those rocks on the left into something with scales, heading back into the sea.” A few comments later and it became “What if we all use this image as reference and see what we come up with?” After reading these and other comments I decided I’d give it a go with the intention of just transforming the rocks using photoshop into something resembling a dragon – not to hard really, a tint of colour here, a bit of shade there and the you go a nice fluffy dragon looking out over the water. This simple plan went wrong as I realized that I really don’t like drawing dragons in photoshop, well, I’m happier drawing on paper with a pencil than using the wacom but for this quick edit it would have been handy to just once work completely in photoshop

So, the obvious solution was to print out the image and sketch over it, which I tried but did not enjoy much. A few sheets of paper and a lot of scribbles later and I’d decided that the rounded mound of trees in the distance was really crying out for a castle upon it, so that was added to the sketch and I marked up a nice clean sheet of watercolour paper. The sky was added quickly and I started on the towers for the castle, as I painted away I thought the island/mound on the left would probably feel left out if there was no castle upon it so I added a few more towers. That only left the tiny island in the middle, which was starting to look lonely… you get the idea. The castle on the very left of the page replacing the trees was a very late decision, but not as late an addition as the little guy in the doorway.

Anyway, the painting was done and I was about to upload it when I decided I did not like the colour of the dragon much, and so I changed the colour in photoshop

Sizergh Castle & Gardens

Graeme Skinner — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:42:33 +0000

Today we had a run out to Sizergh Castle which is only a few miles outside of Kendal in Cumbria. We first met up at Sizergh Barn with a friend for coffee and cake, the barn is just outside the grounds of Sizergh Castle and is an excellent place to stop for a bite.

The gardens at Sizergh Castle are great for a wander with the camera, I could not take photographs inside the castle as it’s not allowed, but I managed a few outside