Draw A Sheep - Part Three

One of my favorite sheep artists is new friend Barbara Leonard. Barbara is an English designer and creator of one of the cutest sheep on the blog block, Sherbet. Sherbet lives in a darling cottage called Clover Cottage and especially enjoys gardening, nature, visiting and cooking with his friends, but also worries and writes about current events that affect sheep. B. Willard has enjoyed getting to know him and having an English pen pal.

Sherbet hopes to one day have his own animated tv show and currently has an e-book in the works, with poems about him and his friends, full of illustrations. For now he shares little stories of his life on his blog, Sherbet Sheep and Friends.

He and his friends joined us for a day of sheep drawing. Let's see what adventures transpired!

Please excuse the huge spaces. I can't figure out how to get rid of them, so we'll just think of them as extra spaces to doodle more sheep ;-).

Oh what a wonderful day it is today. I woke up very early, eager to start the day and as I sat at my kitchen table eating my scrumptious breakfast, I felt very excited as I knew that at any moment Pearl, Doodle and Mango would knock on my door ready to share a very creative day with me. Last week Pearl had thought of a very good idea. She asked Doodle if he would teach us all to draw. Well you see, Doodle Dog is very talented indeed and he loves to share his rainbow coloured ideas with everyone he meets. At half past eight exactly my dear friends arrived at Clover Cottage and our amazing day was ready to begin.

First of all though, I needed a little help with a few garden tasks, so Mango, Doodle and Pearl jumped into my wheelbarrow clutching their garden tools, and I pushed them all, bumping them along, to my vegetable garden, where we weeded, dug and planted until there was just no more to do at all. I then pushed them all back to the front of Clover Cottage where they jumped out of the wheelbarrow and then the fun began !

Doodle had brought along lots of pencils, paint brushes and crayons and some sketch pads and we all sat down on my green, crunchy grass, which luckily felt lovely and dry. Doodle asked me to stand up and be his model, while Pearl and Mango watched the lesson carefully.

I felt a little embarrassed at first and my cheeks blushed a little, to an even deeper shade of pink than they were already. Everyone said how handsome I looked so I soon found my courage and stood proudly under the oak tree to have my picture drawn. All the little creatures in my garden gathered around. The hedgehogs had stopped drinking from their saucer of milk to join the group, the frogs had stopped croaking and hopped over to sit next to Mango, the butterflies fluttered around my head giving me more confidence and the caterpillars left the shelter of their cabbage leaves to watch. We were all settling down into our nice, comfy, grassy seats, all except me of course, as I was the honoured chosen model! All was quiet as we waited expectantly for Doodle to start drawing.

You will never guess what happened next. All of a sudden there was a loud creak and a scary, cracking noise from the branches of the oak tree, we all looked up and were shocked to see a whole nest full of baby blackbirds tumbling down from the tree. I acted very quickly and just caught them in time before they fell to the ground. Oh dear, what a surprise! There I was, standing in front of my audience, holding a very prickly nest of chirping birds. I have never in my life known such a thing. How wonderful I thought, to have been able to save these lovely little creatures from a very nasty fall indeed. We then all heard a loud, cheery cheeping sound coming from the sky and we looked up again to see the very relieved mother blackbird diving around in the air with joy. She had an expression of pure gratitude on her face, she was smiling so much that her beak was curled up at the edges. I invited her to join us in our drawing class. She said yes, she would be delighted to sit on the grass next to all the other little creatures and watch the lesson. At that point Doodle had a brilliant idea. He asked the mother blackbird if she would mind if her baby birds could be in the picture with me. She agreed, filled with pride as her babies had never been drawn before. I stood in my place holding the birds nest very, very carefully while Doodle showed us all how to draw. After a little while he held up a beautiful sketch of me and the nest of baby birds.

We all clapped in delight at the clever picture and even though we all knew we cannot draw as well as Doodle, it inspired us all to go home and draw, with the rainbow coloured crayons Doodle had given us.

Mango especially, was so eager to make a drawing of his plate of cheese that he had left on his window sill, that he rushed home to his red watering can at full speed and leaped in the top, disappeared inside and did not appear again until he had finished his drawing!

Oh what a simply delightful day we all had together. I am so happy to have taken part in Doodle's drawing lesson and I am truly grateful that I was able to save the little birds from danger. I have promised the mother blackbird, that tomorrow, I will climb up my wooden ladder and put the nest with her precious babies in, back among the oak tree branches where they belong, so that they can grow stronger in complete peace and happiness until they are ready to fly. I do so hope they stay and make their homes here at Clover Cottage where they will be most welcome to join all the other little creatures in my garden.

I felt really important being a special guest at the Punkin's Patch draw a sheep challenge and I hope everyone goes out to a garden to enjoy the beautiful spring weather and try drawing some sheep with their friends. I'm so looking forward to meeting everyone.

Love from Sherbet x