Laura Mallaghan Illustration

It's Earth Day today! Be kind to pollinators, such as bees, hoverflies, butterflies and moths, they have their job for the earth as they keep the lands greener, as well as grow many wildflowers by carrying and spreading the pollens. When I been thinking of what to paint to associate Earth Day, then remembered a photo of the large white butterfly ( it was a male, showed from his wing), sat on the pink clubbed begonia; photo shows from above. So I was inspired by this to paint, especially the bold pink petal, working on A5 and including the bumblebee. So I'm off out to the countryside, frolicking through the field full of wildflowers and watching the bees and butterflies in the air. Have a lovely day!

When will the warmth come in this month? A little over a week ago was absolutely shiveringly cold! I've been thinking about the beautiful blossom trees that will bloom, as I have three cherry trees in my garden and would've been bloom on the whole tree by then, at the moment there has been a small number of flowers bloomed but lots of buds. This then inspired me to paint the birds on the tree branch, I choose Long-tailed tit as they're my favourite bird. I have been struggling to visualise the branch to draw out, I research the image reference from online and photos I've taken from my garden. Here are the photo references I had in my garden, the plum (pink) and cherry (white) trees; I just draw in a flow from these references. I'll tell you what, it was really hard to do photography in sunlight with so many shadows throughout the day, trying to get some lovely photos. The birch tree in my front garden is starting to grow some leaves, here come the challenges to phot

Here's an another pet portrait of my second foster rabbit. I'd like another reminder about having rabbits from Easter time. As I mentioned in this blog post: Rabbits are for life, not just for Easter , that we had one in this situation, a rabbit bought for Easter gift and later abandoned in the street. This is April the Abandoned Easter Rabbit. Back in 2012, Easter Day was on the 8th of April, a couple of weeks after Easter weekend, the kind people spotted her between the outer back garden and the field, comforted her while waiting for the RSPCA inspector. My family were informed about her and we went to collect her. My family and I named her April because she was rescued in April and we also thought it's suited her. She was a mini Rex, she does have a really nice velvety fur coat. She was quite shy but doesn't mind the human company around her, so she was a very sweet girl, and we thought she's a young doe. As we thought she's young, we assumed she must've