I did draw a little heart above the 2 hens at the back but felt that would be me anthropomorphising. The big one at the back on the left is Clive he was the largest and most alpha of the men in the flock, he arrived as a chick and as usual was presumed a girl till his feet started to grow! He had no career ladder to climb he was just built for the job! He ran his harem with a firm wing, no-one messed with Clive! Though, it never stopped the ladies having a word or two.

The hen at the front is a representation of Birch, a very friendly hen of ours. She was never one to look a bug in the eye and just walk away!

The first draft of the picture looked too tranquil, some people can just sleep anywhere regardless of noise… so what else to include? Highland cattle despite the terrifying horns do lure selfie seekers the world over and seem to shout Scotland from just a few minutes across the border. They do have a wander lust, especially if the veg. looks greener on the other side of the fence, also very few fences can contain them if the moment seizes. So I dropped a few in. Also if set between October and April, those feet would’ve been frozen solid. If between May & September, they’d have been skeletonised by the midges. Maybe bovine methane is a repellent and should be bottled? Its certainly flammable so “adventurers” beware! I couldn’t figure out a way of including a tick or two as they’re too small but they’re in there somewhere rest assured.

Often with these little pictures I get easily distracted and add things in that seem really pertinent to the scene, many end up deleted despite hours of drawing. That ferry for instance, twice a day back and forth to Stornoway unless weather intervenes, the Loch Seaforth, is pretty iconic here and important as a lifeline service, so it made it into the picture.

The Stornoway based SAR (Search And Rescue) helicopter too is iconic for a whole set of different reasons, for some too it is a very literal lifeline service. It frequently flies on a path along Lochbroom to Inverness or veers off to hunt for some unfortunate soul in the nearby mountains, it made it in too.

What almost didn’t make it to the final cut was the big green Hercules transport plane that barrels down the loch at wonderfully low levels almost weekly (Monday’s) on training sorties.

You do see some big skies here, so they are important in any backdrop, They’re maybe not quite as full-on as this one but a splash of artistic license is just me trying to capture the spirit! Ben Mor Coigach adds some helpful compositional gravitas in the distance. A tall ship was in harbour the day I captured this scene so it made it in.

On some days (not many!) the loch is truly mirror flat and the reflections are impressive. Its a summer time image so imagine the midges about you as you stand and admire the view while fidgeting.

Finally, as an image it’s very wide as the scene is so linear it is hard to see everything. I hummed and hawed about whether to slice bits off for this page but couldn’t bring myself to. As a print it looks really well but to do it justice it needs to be long… I could put it on a card or a magnet but you’d need your special glasses as well as a microscope to get the full benefit!

Those souls that chose to live here have, across the eons, rustled up a huge variety of desirable residences; constructed, demolished, collapsed, re-built, burnt down, blown up, washed away or recycled.

I thought a little pictorial celebration of those shelters, big, small and unfortunate, was in order!

In the early days all was good, perhaps unwittingly our homes were very in tune with the landscape. The forms of abode were simple, using very local materials or landform to protect them. In the early days while we learned to cook, fight, fortify, live together, fight a bit more, farm, fight again, war a bit, conquer and then farm some more, our shelters developed to suit the needs of the time – eg hearth, rain, foul weather, massive walls (fortification), animal housing, furniture, weapons collections, pictures, big banqueting tables, 4-poster beds, deer trophies and soft furnishings etc etc.

In terms of these built “contributions” to our rural landscape, things (to me at least) started to take a downward spiral on the timeline somewhere around the point the very urban 1930/40s brick built bungalow began to pop up in odd highland places. You’ll see them & their cousins if you open your eyes in villages and on even the most remote corner of a c-class road. Then came the timber frame explosion and the development style houses of the 70s, 80s and 90s. Not to forget the appearance in (and ever since) the 70s of the des-res beauty (I know, I know – eye of the beholder etc.) aka the static caravan…spread like a bad rash in some truly beautiful places.

In modern times I feel we are a little bereft in the Highlands of an identifiable style of modern home, maybe a good thing, maybe bad? The inoffensive black and then white houses of the 1800’s, the ornamentally gabled, pitched and dormered styles of the Victorians and our modern pastiches of them, seem to be this era’s adopted favoured forms.

Currently in a little subset of tourism related small homes… its the turn of the mystifying “pod”, the campervan berths or those singularly individualistic holiday homes wrapped in cedar or larch trying to conceal themselves inoffensively in the landscape.

I’ve had a go at them all….grit your teeth!

Oh and it seems we’ve not got enough toilets for visitors… perhaps some artistic homage to those little shelters for public convenience be they big, small, paid for or boutique; should be my next series.

The sea is a swirling place of change and beauty (not just a store for plastic!!) driven by the moon and the weather. It is therefore only natural that it should emanate a balancing force that often strips the common sense of those souls who are drawn to it May – October.

So much happens around our coast every year, fun, disaster and plain lunacy that I thought some simple snippets might add some background interest! The angler is a representation of a thinner me, tangled up in line, caught fast, hopeless in my quest for Pollock. And yes it is a fly rod for the observant, the “only” way to fish!

Sammy the seal features and to better reflect natures yin and yang I brought the fish trio back (maybe they turned into sea trout?). The Brexit hiatus was in everyone’s face for months so a little nod to our English friends as they set sail into uncertain waters sea… (us too… for now?). The little seal head in the midground is my nod to everyone who used to excitedly get their 110 (film format) holiday photos developed and then convincedly point out the blurry microscopic black head that was “definitely” there. The Landrover is based upon one I encountered in real life, I have tried to be faithful to the colour scheme! The Lochinver lifeboat and the Stornoway SAR are regulars out in the Minch giving reassurance to all those in need. The bobbing li-lo hints at something still at play.

Sadly too you won’t catch them while sitting in a chair dangling a worm on a hook into the shallows. No… Your line will catch in trees, in heather, way above you on slopes or between rocks. Some bright spark will try and suggest you do a roll cast or better a reverse back cast while hanging off a rock over some deep pool. That same someone will be able to see hundreds of fish in the deep pool while you can see none (because you don’t have the special glasses). Likely too it’ll rain all that day or when the rain stops billions and billions of midges will set about you. The “rise” is a term applied to the period perhaps after rain or in the early evening when its very midgey or when insects hatch en masse, the Trout “rise” to surface to feed.

Trout don’t make life easy for the angler. So I drew a picture instead…They’re out there (the trout) between May & October if you’re so inclined to fish for them or just buy the card!

The scene “delicately” reflects some of the impacts felt here post lockdown release e.g. cabin fevered stay-cationers, unusually packed villages, busy roads, lay-by latrines, lunatic drivers, campers believing they are truly wild and wild places that now, as never before, grasp the thoughtless impacts of a sector of vacationing humanity.

Positively; there are many local community initiatives afoot up here to counter the rising tide. Amongst them, trowels in laybys, increased calls to 101, fevered angst ridden typing in the online echoey “courts” of social media, political polarisation, vigilante sticker gangs, appeals to leave only footprints and not “Camping Worlds” entire back catalogue of tent tat or a black smouldering mess of plastic and metal on pristine machair.

To help me capture just a shade of this social perspective, I rely once more upon my cast of skilled actors to pose in a Little Worlds artwork that perhaps points at some additional opportunities for initiatives. Ideas from their hearts indeed but tinged with a sense of bravery and night time tension for them; as well as the unwary visitor. Their expressions convey their acceptance that big moves mean big sacrifices. Re-wilding after extends beyond the sweet nut gathering red squirrel and the water loving tree trimming beaver. Do remember what wolves like to eat for desert, wool n’ bones n’ all and for mains a tent and wild camper burrito would be an award winning dish, attracting the whole pack. Chickens will have a peck at just about anything; to a wolf though, they’d offer all the fun of an afternoon arcade game or high tea. And the bears, oh bring back the bears! The true clearance team of the woods, glens, laybys, tracks and car parks. I didn’t include our native snake in this as he rarely makes an appearance but still packs a good dose of holiday dread if mentioned in the same sentence as “a day out in the heathery hills”. The midges too are a force of nature. However too many lotions, nets and uncommonly sunny summers are having an impact on their effectiveness; denting their historical and legendary status as our guardians.

The tick too is a hill emptier better left for the day (a few days later often) you find them firmly affixed to your nether regions (shorts wearers pay attention!).

The community too (human) is active, still promoting, worrying, welcoming, fretting, watching, offsetting, discovering, typing, stereotyping, enrolling in online misanthropy courses, stockpiling loo rolls for winter and wondering about Russia’s vaccine…what can it be?…vodka, old plutonium and cabbage juice?

It is important to recognise the serious side of all of this for our environment, its residents, their livers and our visitors, so here are some important links. Note: none link to a distillery…too many to choose from.

https://www.outdooraccess-scotland.scot/

https://www.outdooraccess-scotland.scot/practical-guide-all/camping

I then re-deployed my favourite trio of character actors using their multi picture experience and acting skill to adapt to my many scripts! The big flying “blueberry muffin” came from a moment in the past where I was left in no doubt who knew where their beak was in the third dimension. They can move them with deadly precision.

I’d like to think in this picture maybe there was a split second or two of moral quandary in the hens pea brains just shortly before the inevitable happened. Just me anthropomorphising perhaps optimistically. Fast food first….digestive regrets later.