Castlerigg, Buttermere and Kelly Hall Tarn.

"Drawing is the honesty of art, to draw does not mean simply to reduce contours: drawing does not consist merely of line, drawing is also expression, the inner form, the plane and the modelling."

(Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres)

"Once paper, pen-and-ink-well have been brought to table, Victor Hugo sits down and without making a preliminary sketch, without any apparent preconceptions, sets about drawing with an extraordinary sure hand not the landscapes as a whole but any old detail."

(Charles Hugo)

Borrowdale and Honister Pass Cumbria

"I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have a bad time come over me it is a stronger desire than ever."

(Beatrix Potter)

"Drawing is the artists most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality."

(Edgar Degas)

Wasdale Cumbria

"When I first came the lake was a perfect mirror and what must have been the glory of the reflections in it! This huge facing of rock said to be half a mile in perpendicular height, with deep ravines the whole winded and torrent worn, except where the pink-striped screes come in, as smooth as silk, all reflected, turned into pillars, dells, and a whole new world of images in the water! The head of the lake is crowned by three huge pyramidal mountains, Yew-Barrow, Sca'Fell,and Great Gable".

(Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

"But to proceed with our survey, and, first of the mountains. Their forms are endlessly diversified, sweeping easily or boldly in simple majesty, abrupt and precipitous, or soft and elegant".

(William Wordsworth)

Levens Hall Topiary

"A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long".

(E E Cummings)

"At present, I am mainly observing the physical motion of mountains, water, trees and flowers. One is everywhere reminded of similar movements in the human body, of similar impulses of joy of suffering in plants".

(Egon Schiele)

Levens Hall Park

"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature as all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."

(William Blake)

"The best friend of the earth of man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources on the earth."

(Frank Lloyd Wright)

Cartmel

"It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something of its true character."

(Camille Pissarro)

"I have never seen bad drawing destroy a good idea. On the other hand I've never seen a good drawing save a bad idea."

(Paul Conrad)

Lydia

"Women are young mens mistresses,companions for middle age and old mens nurses."

(Francis Bacon)

"I feel there is something unexplored about women that only a women can explore."

(Georgia O'Keeffe)

Frampton on Severn

Frampton on Severn. The gale raged here with great violence. Houses were partially unroofed, chimney stacks blown down, and some of the finest trees in the locality torn up by the roots. At the bell inn, the chimney stack fell through the roof of the bedroom occupied by the housekeeper and the servant maid.

(Gloucester Journal 23rd Feb 1861)

"I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than occupy the most splendid post, which human power can give."

(Thomas Jefferson)