Category Archives: Animals

Continuous Lines in forged metal, by Doug Eglen.

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Continuous Line knots in tempered metal forged by Doug Eglen. Photo by Doug sent to Mick Burton, April 2025.

Doug Eglen contacted me in March 2025 to say that he had recently started having an interest in knots and unknots and came across my painting of Haken’s Gordian knot, which you can see in my earlier posts of 9 May 2018 and 5 June 2015

Continuous Line Artist view of Haken’s Gordian Knot.

How do you construct Haken’s Gordian Knot?

He asked for my permission to paint his own version of the Gordian knot, based upon my painting.  He intended to exhibit his painting, along with the new metal knots which he was producing in his forge.  Doug has an exhibit case at Purdue University, Indiana, in the Math department library.  I agreed, and answered his questions about assumptions he had made about the construction of my painting. 

Doug later sent me a copy of his painting.  This is impressive, as are his metal knots, and you can see them on his website   

https://http://www.deglen.org/math-art

I particularly liked Doug’s photo of his 3/8″ square metal, in what I would call a sort of “double boomerang” shape without any twists.

Doug Eglen square 3/8″ metal without twists in a continuous line, copied to Mick Burton.

The alternate over and under style, like Celtic knotwork, produces great highlight graduations as well as suggestions of colour that Doug achieves with his firing treatments. I like the dark shade of the sides of the metal compared with the shadow of the piece.  I would like to draw this.

At school, when I was 12, I produced a metal poker with brass handle which has a half twist.  I have had no further experience of metal work.

Brass handle with half twist on my poker, made at school when I was 12. Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

I did do some wire bending to produce a single continuous line wire horse in 1967.  At first I placed it underneath a piece of clear glass covering the dining table, to hold it down.  Then I secured it to a wooden board through a centre page magazine photo of a horse grazing in a meadow.

Continuous line Horse in a length of garden wire done in 1967. Mick Burton.

Next, I went sculptural and used cardboard strips to take the Horse a stage further in 1970 when I lived in Nottingham.

Continuous line Horse using strips of cardboard 1970. Mick Burton.

I showed it to someone at work who’s Dad owned a company which produced steel castings. He said he would ask his Dad about the possibilities of doing a metal horse.  The answer was a “Yes”, but it would cost me £3,000 !  I now know someone who’s cousin does 3D printing, so maybe I can get a more reasonable quote now.

Of course, this is all “small beer” compared to Doug Eglen’s metal workings.

Harrogate and Nidderdale Art Club, Spring Exhibition 2025 at Ripley Town Hall.

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Harrogate and Nidderdale Art Club, Spring Exhibition 2025. At Ripley Town Hall.

The Harrogate and Nidderdale Art Club, Spring Exhibition, will be held on 3rd to 5th May 2025 at Ripley Town Hall.  As usual, there will be a wide range of quality paintings, prints and cards by members of the club at this splendid venue.

My pictures will include the completed coloured version of my single continuous line Phormium which I covered in my earlier post of 27 November 2024.  I call it “Phormium in Snow”.  There were also fox tracks passing the phormium, down and back up the garden, which I thought of including.

Phormium in Snow. Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

Another update from that post is that the bees have re-occupied the hole in the lawn. 

There is often a bee arriving and another leaving at the same time.  It is not a quick process!  The one landing may circle around and land a foot away and wander around before working its way through the grass into the hole.  The leaver will crawl out and wander around before flying off at low level.   Of course, when I mow the lawn I have to be careful that they are not coming or going when I go over their area.

And now here is something completely different.

Tsunami Tackles Wildfire. Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

Another new picture is my “Tsunami Tackles Wildfire”.  It combines two Climate Change topics, pitting two extreme situations against each other.        

Spherical Continuous Line Abstract with Colour Sequence.

I started the picture during an Abstract workshop arranged by club Chairman Steve Walmsley.  I told him what the title might be.  I also said that, as President Trump was making all sorts of announcements to change the World, I could call the picture “Trump calls in Tsunami to tackle California Wildfire and if that fails he has Icebergs moored off Greenland he can have towed round.”

Phormium New Zealand Flax continuous line drawing.

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Phormium, New Zealand Flax. Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

We have just had snow from Storm Burt and it weighed down some of the sword-like leaves of our sturdy Phormium.  Here is the photo below.

Phormium, after snow weighed down the leaves. Photo Mick Burton, continuous line artist..

I considered that the mixture of curved drooping leaves and straight upright leaves would make a good contrasting straight and curved overlapping continuous line. 

As soon as the snow went, the leaves sprang back upright again.  The leaves are pretty rigid and I prune them with a hack saw.

After the snow melted the sword-like leaves returned to straight up. Photo Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

Captain Cook and Joseph Banks recorded the plant in New Zealand in 1770.  The Museum of New Zealand states that “Russia, the main supplier of sailcloth and rope for the Royal Navy, had restricted sales to England and Cook considered the New Zealand flax as and alternative for making these vital supplies.”

We had good fox tracks in the snow this time.  In one direction it was a single line of spaced prints and in the other it was pairs of prints spaced out.

Before the snow came, I had raked up all the leaves and produced our biggest pile yet, for the first stage of producing soil from leaf mould.  It is far bigger than the pen I built for leaves.  Of course, some are blown in from Gledhow Valley Woods.

Largest leaf pile to date. Photo Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

As the leaf pile has spilled across the slab path up the garden I was interested to see what the Fox did when using the path – would it go round?  Nope, it staggered over the right hand side of the pile.

One strange thing every year is the the Red leaved Acer drops its leaves before all the other trees and the Bronze leaved Acer is usually the last.

Red leaved Acer next to the garage drops leaves long before the bronze leaved one on the left. Photo Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

In the lawn, under the leaves I found that the Bumble Bee hole was still there.  The hole is near the bottom of the photo below.  On the internet it says that the holes are in use for a few months and then not used again, as the queen builds a new one next year.

Bumble Bee hole in the lawn. Photo Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

When I first spotted the hole in the lawn in late May there was a Bee just emerging from it.  The black patch at the very bottom of the photo is the shadow of the bee.

Bumble bee leaving the nest hole in the lawn. Photo Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

I first found out about Bees nesting in the ground when I was digging the tiers in the bank at the top of the garden. I became aware that an increasing number of bees were circling around me.  It was just couple of Bumble Bees at first then all sorts of sizes of bees, some appearing to be similar to hive bees, flying around me.  I realised that I must have disturbed their nest and so I stopped the digging for the day.  The next day I came to look and there was a new hole in the bank and bees coming out, so I just abandoned my digging for the summer.

 

Terrified Army Horses Gallop through London.

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Terrified Army Horses. Continuous line with colour. Mick Burton.

Seven Army horses and six riders were on an exercise in Kensington in April 2024, to help them get used to traffic and other noises in the City.  Near Hyde Park Corner at 8.30am the horses were frightened by a slab of concrete being dropped by Builders.  Four Army personnel were thrown from their horses and five horses dashed off into rush hour traffic.  Three soldiers had non-life threatening injuries.

There were collisions with vehicles which caused injuries to some of the horses and one horse hit a cyclist who was injured and taken to hospital.  Two horses were eventually apprehended almost six miles away at Limehouse by Police officers.  That evening, all horses were being cared for by vets.

I later read that it was two or three months before the horses were considered fully fit to patrol again.

The Daily Mail article included the following photograph, which I used as the basis for my continuous line drawing of two of the horses.

Daily Mail photograph 25.4.24. “Two panic-stricken horses, one of them bloodied, gallop across Central London.”  Photograph, Jordan Pettitt / PA Wire.

Whenever I have drawn horses before, I have used the general shape and structure of the animal to provide the design and I have never included a rider.  

Harrogate and Nidderdale Art Club – Autumn Exhibition 2023

Colour Sequence on Continuous Line Drawing

Of course there are no riders this time because they had been thrown off, but I decided that it was important to include the saddle, harnesses etc.

Regarding adding colour to the drawing, in the painting at the top of the post, I decided to use the fact the one horse was black and the other white.  Having a dark background to the right highlights the white horse.  The blood on the white horse produced the Black, White and Red combination I have used several times before. 

It occurred to me that the impression was like portraying “A bat out of Hell”, which could reflect how these poor horses felt.

Continuous line drawing of Terrified Horses in London. Mick Burton.

These two pictures are to be exhibited at the  Stainbeck Arts Club Annual Exhibition on Saturday 31 August 2024 at Chapel Allerton Methodist Centre, Leeds, LS7 4NB.  This is part of the Chapel Allerton Arts Festival.

Stainbeck Arts Club Exhibition, 31 August 2024, Chapel Allerton Arts Festival, Leeds.

https://stainbeckarts.co.uk

 

Harrogate and Nidderdale Art Club – Autumn Exhibition 2023

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Harrogate and Nidderdale Art Club – Autumn Exhibition 2023. Ripley Town Hall, 25-26 November 2023.

Harrogate and Nidderdale Art Club hold two exhibitions a year, Spring and Autumn.  The club has over 60 members and meets on Thursday evenings at Harrogate Grammar School during terms.  There are visiting demonstrators or talks at about half of meetings.

I will be exhibiting 7 pictures at the Autumn Exhibition, including two continuous line drawings of animals based upon photographs.

Daniel, Queen Elizabeth’s favourite Windsor Grey carriage horse, in 2017 when he retired to the Horse Trust.  Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

I have always liked shire horses and I based this continuous line drawing on a photograph in the Daily Mail article by Lucy Holden on 3 August 2017.  Danial, retired Royal carriage horse, is romping around in the paddock at Horse Trust.  I have added “fluffy feet”.

My main reason for producing this drawing is the memory of taking my kids to Bradford Industrial Museum and seeing the shire horses arrive back from a procession in full regalia around Bradford.  The staff suggested that we watch the horses when they were released into the paddock after a hard days work.  The horses immediately started dashing around, prancing and rolling on the ground and leaping up again.  We were shocked, surely these heavy animals would break something!

Here is a photograph of Daniel having a roll at the Horse Trust.

Daniel the Royal carriage horse having a roll in the Horse Trust paddock. Daily Mail, Lucy Holden article, 3 August 2017.

Daniel was Queen Elizabeth’s favourite carriage horse for 15 years up to his retirement in 2017 at the age of 22.  His face appeared on a Royal Mail stamp in 2014 and a life size bronze sculpture of him, and another of colleague Storm, appear to trot across the grass on the roundabout near the Long Walk in Windsor. Sculptor Robert Rattray, who was commissioned by residents to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee in 2012, said “Daniel is an old stalwart and rather cantankerous”.

Bald Eagle, swooping down for a fish. Mick Burton, continuous line Artist.

I based this continuous line drawing of a Bald Eagle on a Getty Image shown below.  I found that progressing overlapping loops worked well with the feathers.

Bald Eagle, Getty Image.

I also did a preliminary drawing in pen and colour pencil.

Bald Eagle in pen and coloured pencil. Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

 

 

 

Fluorescephant continuous line to Irrelephant Elephant in 50 years

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I have just had my 80th Birthday and received two cards which both stated “Remember… age is irrelephant!” along with a picture of an Elephant.  Here is one of them below.

Birthday card “80 years young” and “age is irrelephant!” by Pigment Productions Ltd.

This reminded me of my continuous line elephant with colour sequence which was exhibited at the International Amateur Art Exhibition, at Warwick Square Gallery, London, in February 1973 and at the National Society Open Exhibition at the Mall Galleries, London, in March 1973.  It is the forerunner of “Elephant Grass” at the top of these posts.  I call it “Fluorescephant”.

“Fluorescephant” continuous line exhibited at the International Amateur Open Exhibition and at the National Society Open Exhibition in 1973.

My flatmate Phil suggested that I call it “Fluorescephant”, which I thought was an excellent suggestion.  This word is still uniquely referenced to me on Google.  When I googled “irrelephant” some dictionaries say that it means “Not related to elephants: irrelevant to the discussion of elephants”.

One image that popped up was actually a single continuous line elephant which appears on a shirt produced by “Spreadshirt”.  I am impressed, even though they say that my opinion is irrelephant.

Single continuous line Elephant “Your opinion is irrelephant” on shirt produced by “Spreadshirt”.

This play on words is a bit like “Answersmash”, a game played on the TV game show “House of Games” presented by Richard Osman.

Being 80 triggers all sorts of daft thoughts.  I have told people that I was wondering about Best Before dates on things.  I have decided to adopt one for myself.  About 10 years ago, at a table tennis venue where the home team had a box of wrapped biscuits for visitors, we joked that most of them were past their “Best before dates”.  But I found one that was fine and it’s date was 29.04.3013.  That will do for me!

Cadbury Flake wrapper Best Before Date of 29.04.3013. Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

 

 

 

“That’s our Water on the Gold Coast”.

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“That’s our Water on the Goldcoast”. Reaction by Terry when shown “Climate Change Down Under”, a continuous line drawing by Mick Burton.

Our friends Cathy and Terry, who live in Queensland, Australia, were over here recently.  I showed them a photo of my painting “Climate Change Down Under” which I featured in a recent post         Climate Change Hits Australia, continuous line drawing.

I show it again below.  Terry immediately said “That’s our Water!”.

Climate Change hits Australia. Continuous line drawing. Mick Burton.

When I painted it I simply wanted to include a shape depicting Water in blue, in contrast to the Fire in red and the Sunshine in yellow on the land behind.  We knew that Cathy and Terry lived on the Gold Coast and overlooked some moorings, but I did not realise that their waterways were so similar to my painting.

Here is a broader view of their wonderful part of the Gold Coast, which is near Brisbane in Queensland.  Their “water” is at the bottom of the map.

Runaway Bay, on the Gold Coast, showing Cathy and Terry’s “water” at the bottom. Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

When Joan and I visited Cathy and Terry in May 2013, they lived inland as I mentioned in the post of October 2022.  Cathy dropped us off in the Gold Coast for the day and here are a few photos.

Gold Coast, Queensland. May 2013. Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

Pelicans near the beach, Gold Coast, Queensland. May 2013. Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

Sunset on the Gold Coast, Queensland. May 2013 at about 4.30pm. Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

Continuous Line Drawing in Colour by Logan Clarke.

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Logan's continuous line hen.

Continuous line Hen by Logan Clarke. Mick Burton post.

Logan contacted me a couple of months ago, saying that he was in Year 7 at a school in Derbyshire and that his Art Teacher had asked his class to complete a homework project based upon my art.

He liked the Rhino that I had featured recently (which was done by a member of Pateley Bridge Art club during a workshop) and my Hen with eggs, which I show below.  He asked for some advice on how I do my continuous line drawings.

Harriet’s Busy day. Single continuous line drawing with colour sequence. Background based on eggs. Mick Burton, 2012.

I sent Logan a short write up on my approach to Continuous Line Drawing and he later sent me his marvellous coloured drawing of his own hen invention, shown at the top of this post.  He has used a range of colours which go well together and the yellows are placed in a very balanced way.  He shows the vibrancy and character of the hen.

Logan’s Dad Paul also had a go at a continuous line Guinea Pig which I show below.

Logan’s Dad Paul Clarke’s continuous line guinea pig. Mick Burton post.

This is an excellent compact drawing with solid balanced colours.  I can imaging this animal bulldozing its way through the straw.

Logan had said that he was due to visit York on holiday and he was looking forward to doing a drawing of York Minster.  I said that I would like to see the result.  Here it is.

York Minster, drawing by Logan Clarke. Mick Burton post.

I mentioned to Logan that I have an ancestor, Thomas Mace a 17th century composer, who said in his book on music that he was at a service in the Minster during the Civil War when York was under siege by Cromwell’s soldiers.  He described how a small missile from a gun smashed through a high window and bounced off several pillars inside before hitting the floor.  Made me think of a pin ball machine.

 

Climate Change Hits Australia, continuous line drawing.

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Climate Change hits Australia. Continuous line drawing. Mick Burton.

I have been looking at using the Primary Colours in a way which uses the colour mix when they overlap.  I wanted to produce a result as effective as that achieved in my “Knight’s Tour Fragments” abstract shown below.

“Knight’s Tour Fragments”, acrylic on canvas. Exhibited at Harrogate and Nidderdale Art Club Exhibition in November 2016. Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

Here I produced a similar effect to overlapping pieces of coloured glass.

This time I decided to give each Primary Colour a distinctive shape which seemed to reflect the nature of the colour itself.  Red often represents Fire and so I decided to use straight lines and pointed angles to contain it.  Blue is a quieter colour often representing water and so I decided upon curves and flowing fingers to contain it.  Yellow can represent the sun and I thought of the outline of Australia, which includes the “sunshine state” of Queensland.

Joan and myself visited some friends of hers in Queensland in 2013.  They lived inland from Brisbane in a large wooden house that they built, which had a couple of wallabies resident in the garden.  They moved to live on the Gold Coast a few years ago, but heard from old neighbours in early 2020 that a bush fire had nearly destroyed their old house.  The street had been evacuated and the fire was apparently heading for the house but veered off in another direction just in time.  The increased number of fires are attributed to Global Warming.

Earlier this month we saw on the news that floods in Sydney were amongst the worst since records began in the 1850’s.

With all these things coming together, I decided upon Primary Colours and Australia as part of a Continuous Line workshop I did a couple of weeks ago at Harrogate and Nidderdale Art Club.

For the picture at the top of this post, I superimposed the straight line Red fire line and the curvy Blue water line on top of the sunny Yellow Australia.  This produced semi-primes Orange, Green and Violet areas and where all three Primes overlapped we have a sort of muddy Brown.

I like to think that the outline of a subject can be used to direct continuous lines into the interior which create an image representing the subject.  After completing a single continuous line over a map of Australia I realised that there was something like a kangaroo in there which I have marked in red.  Also, if you push things a little, there may be a Black Swan over Western Australia.

Kangaroo and maybe Black Swan images from single continuous line of Australia. Mick Burton.

The friends we visited have my Wallaby painting in their house on the Gold Coast.

Wallaby, or Kangaroo. Single continuous line drawing and colour sequence. Massive distance background added. Mick Burton, 2013.

Other Primary Colour things we did I will cover in a later post.

 

 

Alien Creatures on Train Tracks Puzzle Continuous Line.

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Alien Creature continuous line from Train Tracks Puzzle.    Puzzle Madness, Large, 1.5.2022.  Mick Burton.

This is an update from my post of 24 December 2020 when I explained how I had started Train Tracks Puzzles during Covid lockdowns.    Red Alert, Continuous Line Detected on Train Tracks Puzzle.

When I try to solve a Train Tracks Puzzle, I draw out the grid freehand and copy in the cross references of number of tracks in vertical or horizontal rows as well as the given pieces of track.  A big part of the process is marking the squares, which will not have track pieces, with a circle or cloud shape.  I draw in the track I have decided upon with a line between given pieces of track.

Most people will complete the puzzle on their phone or laptop from start to finish, but I just like drawing things, rather than hitting wrong buttons on keypads most of the time.  Here is my initial drawing.

Initial drawing of Train Tracks Puzzle 1.5.2022. Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

I coloured all “given pieces of track” yellow and the interior of the Alien red in Sharpie pen and did lighter background with coloured pencils, leaving the cloud shapes white.

Here is another Alien from two days later.

Green Alien based upon Train Tracks Puzzle.    Large 3.5.2022 Puzzle Madness.   Mick Burton, continuous line artist.

I mentioned in my post of 24.12.2020 that I was at position 272 out of the 863 people listed.  Also that I had scored 17.925 points compared to the top rated Stirlingkincaid with 2,766,965. This was nearly twice the points of anyone else and I wondered if he ever slept.

I got to about position 130 and for a time just tried to keep treading water at that level.  The number of participants had more than doubled since I started.  Here is the summary a few months ago, at about the time I ceased to do the puzzles.  You can find the Train Tracks puzzles on     https://puzzlemadness.co.uk      .

All time Train Tracks table on Puzzle Madness in June 2022. Top three all over 4 million points and Mick Burton on 240 thousand.

GA had drawn level with Stirlingkincaid on 4,221,000 but both trailed Stevo by 665.  Fourth place Antique was only on 2,708,990.  Do any of them ever sleep?

I have kept quite a lot of my initial drawings and may do some more Aliens.