Watercolour butterflies: memories from Florence

This February my family and I took a special trip to Florence, Italy to celebrate my husband and I's milestone birthday. One of the places I enjoyed visiting most during the holiday was the Museum of Natural History, La Specola. This painting is from a photograph I took of one of the museum collections of …

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Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery Open 2026

“Portrait Gallery” by Rachel Crawshaw I was very pleased to hear that my submission for the Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery Open 2026 was given “highly commended” at the opening on Saturday. I was unable to attend the opening but am looking forward to visiting the exhibition and witnessing in person all of the fantastic …

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A Collaborative Magical Mushroom Adventure!

One of the things I have really enjoyed this year is creating collaborative art works. During a recent Thursday Art Club session we had a fantastic time creating these fabulously fungal collaborative drawings! The idea for the session came from a video I had seen on Instagram a while ago by Jenny Muncaster which you …

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Life Drawing: collage and watercolour pencil sketches

In a recent life drawing session at Hush life drawing in Clitheroe I tried something a bit different to my usual pencil sketches. In preparation for this session I made a rudimentary accordion sketchbook using mixed media paper. I then collaged the paper using pages from a vintage nurses dictionary. To help with drawing onto …

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