Anybody know what the builders of Avebury looked like?

Apparently the inhabitants (or rather, the dead people) in a nearby long barrow had long skulls, high cheekbones, almost Amerindian in appearance.  Archaeologists reckon they were more likely to be dark than Nordic, so here's my first go at an Avebury sort of person.

Anyone recognise him?

Here is a picture of my new hamster

This is Falafel;  I bought him from a pet shop, and I don't trust these people to be able to tell boys and girls apart.  I chose a unisex sort of name on purpose, but this little fella was in a cage marked 'Female Syrian Hamsters'.  Later, when I saw him carefully licking what were definitely male naughty bits, I realised that my lack of confidence was totally 
justified.

I combed his fur with a toothbrush before taking the photo (not the same one that I use to clean my teeth, I hasten to add), so he looks all neat and smart for the camera.  He was very well behaved while I did this;  Herbert would not have tolerated this kind of treatment in a million years, so it was just as well that she had short hair.

(By the way, for any readers not familiar with my hamsters, Herbert was a female hamster sold to me as a male.  I wonder if pet shop staff know where babies come from ...)

The final messings in Photoshop

I've been working on this piece on and off for a while;  one of the main problems was getting it to fit in with the other two of the series, where you encounter the immediate difficulty that this is about 4 sites rather than one (or 5 if you include the Ridgeway).  This is my final word on the matter!

Megalithic Erections and Little Chimps

I'm doing some research into Avebury at the moment, hoping to do a reconstruction drawing of some neolithic folk erecting a standing stone.  I've contacted an engineer who has practical experience of doing this sort of thing, but I won't be seeing him til Friday, and I don't particularly want to do a lot of theoretical stuff which will then be blasted clean out of the water.

So, to pass the time, I thought I'd participate in the 'Send me some Art' project of the Little Chimp Society, and this is the result:



I thought the gouache would be a bit more robust than watercolour, being that it's got to go through the post, and was also a useful experiment in mixing styles!  It's difficult to read the text, too, as this wasn't designed for reproduction, but the writing says:

'And the birds were getting really fed up with having to drink the bathwater'

If you want to know more about the project, here's the link.

Forget Mods and Rockers fighting at Bank Holiday weekends ...

Worcestershire is often criticised for being a county which is behind the times.  It doesn't seem to have speed cameras, for example.  Now, as if to prove  how out of date it really is, here are a couple of Vikings I met this afternoon who were having a fight:



To the death:



(You might have noticed that their farm equipment in the background is quite out of date, too.)

Luckily their fighting seems to be confined to special occasions, in this instance a 'Living History' event at the Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings.  The West Mercia Police seem very good at curtailing their raping and pillaging activities, luckily.

It's always nice to make new friends!

I set off for Woodgate Valley Country Park today;  they have an urban farm there, and I was hoping to get some pictures of rare breeds, or, more specifically, breeds which look similar to those who hung out during British Neolithic times.  They didn't really have any, but I did get this nice shot of a New Zealand pig.  I won't be putting him in any of my archaeological illustrations, but I did think he was a rather fine chap!

The last of three ...

Here's the last of my group of three; you might just have noticed that there are lots more places on it than Wayland's Smithy, which I think you are all getting the hang of by now.  Having spent all week on this set of four watercolours, I then go and wreck it all in Potatoshop...