i went back to the local wildlife fen last week and completed these two quick nature studies plein air... as perceived/recorded, limited by time, size and materials... a good artist friend had given me a small sketch pad of watercolour paper; it seemed churlish not to use it... these two studies are in watercolour and watercolour pencil...i thought it would be interesting to photograph the studies in situ, but in order to get both the drawing/painting and the 'real' landscape in the frame, the wide angle lens made the subject appear much further away than my own perception of it.. it seemed interesting too, in a phenomenological sense, to offer with one image, both the before and after, the past (as i first saw it), the present (as it appears now) and the future (in the objectiveness of such a material study)... and the apparent act of free will or intention in mark-making and gesture and yet controlled by the circumstances in which they are derived...i guess that if i really pushed myself i could do more studies like this and perhaps get better at them, but this was not the day to pursue that, as it turned out...