January visit to Markshall

By Sally Pudney on 15th January 2025

Yesterday I got started on my Twelve Months on an Essex Country Estate painting project. I made my first visit to Markshall!

The first thing I did was to take out a Friends membership. For £49.00 I can make as many visits as I like for the year, which I thought was very good value. I also now have a Friends car park ticket, so that I have access to the woodland when the arboretum and gardens are closed – for example on Sundays and Mondays.

It was a warmer morning than we have had recently, but still only 5 degrees, so not very conducive to sitting still for very long. I had a good walk round the lake, through the walled garden – not much to show there at the moment, of course – and through some of the arboretum.

Two buzzards were circling for some time over the trees at the end of the lake. There were mallards and moorhens on the river running below the white bridge. The huge carp, which we fed  when I was there before Christmas, were all gathered by the weir. Large parts of the lake were still frozen, but the moving water by the weir had prevented freezing in that area.

There isn’t a lot of bright colour around in January, but the dogwoods were vivid in reds and ochre yellows, and the witch-hazels were all covered in their crinkled yellow flowers.

I did a small drawing of the farthest corner of the lake, which is going to be the subject of my painting this month. It was very chilly sitting still!

I thought it was going to be difficult to find any Pickings – but once I’d got into the arboretum I was spoiled for choice. I picked up twigs with larch cones attached, an oak twig with shiny leaf buds, a small section of branch covered with lacy pale blue-green-grey lichen, a small woodpigeons feather and an oak leaf. Here they are, in the tin which I take to put things in to prevent them getting crushed.

Later today I will be drawing some of them with Pitt pastel pencils onto January’s deep blue pastel paper which I showed you in my last post.


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