On the way to School

Phone children at the bus stop as I walked to town. #JulieOakleyDesign #OneMileFromHome #BrushPen #Sandridge #St Albans

Misty City

Sunday lunch in North London followed by a walk round Alexander Palace. Mist-flattened city buildings in the distance. #JulieOakleyDesign #Watercolour #AlexanderPalace #MuswellHill #OneMileFromHome #Watercolor

Zanele Muholi at the Tate

Up early to pick up eggs at the market en route to walking at the South Bank.My children have given me a wonderful Christmas present of Tate membership for a year, so today was a day to take advantage of it. My companion and I decided to choose the exhibition that was going to end the soonest. We didn’t have particularly high expectations but we were blown away by the photographs and sculptural work of Zanele Muholi.

Frosty Verulamium

I had lots of food shopping to to do for the weekend, so as the supermarkets are on the other side of town, I walked in Verulamium Park for a change. The sky was a clear blue, the grass frosted to an eau de nil colour and the low winter sun lit up the tops of the trees framing St Albans Abbey.

The Badger Bench

Today another cold day with blue skies. This rough hewn bench with accompanying badgers, a great source of entertainment for little ones, so I'm looking forward to letting my granddaughter clamber all over it in the summer. For future posts I'm going to leave posting until the day after the walk - I can't be doing this late night posting. And sometimes I won't post for several days. So there'll be a gaps in the future.

My Walk Companion

Although bundled up in a pushchair for our afternoon walk, earlier on was the first day my granddaughter walked six steps without holding onto anything. #JulieOakleyDesign #ColouredPencil #Heartwood #HeartwoodForest #OneMileFromHome #ColoredPencil #Saffron 

Arboretum Excursion

Gorgeous blue skies, frost underfoot. But no time to draw. #JulieOakleyDesign #Photography #Heartwood #HeartwoodForest #OneMileFromHome #NaturePhotography

An Arm and a Leg

I'm not talking about the arms of my glasses here - I'm talking about the price of new lenses. My walk today was trekking from train station to opticians in Enfield and back, to get the best price for my complex lenses. I've stuck with the same frames, which are stratospherically expensive but have lasted me since 2006. Most of the walk was residential streets. How I managed to take care of four children, a husband, a dog, a business AND walk one mile from home every day whilst producing a piece of art and a blogpost every day, the previous time I gave myself this challenge, baffles me.

Soggy Dog

The day started with snow, rapidly followed by rain. Once again, one of those days that only dog-walkers and sketchbloggers were out walking.

The Grumpy Egg Man

Today my walk was all around St Albans town centre. Most Saturdays I visit St Albans market. Wonderful, reasonably priced fresh produce. Sometimes it's a gamble, avocado pears, mangoes and pineapples can be very cheap and very disappointing when you get home. However most of the time the customer wins on price and quality. I usually buy one or two dozen of the beautiful brown and blue eggs from the egg stall. And I invariably come away laughing at the latest bad-tempered rudeness that the egg man inflicts on his customers. Some of his prize comments include "why haven't you brought egg boxes with you - they cost me a fortune", "why do you want that cracked egg changed - you have to crack them anyway". I've seen him insisting that a customer who's just given him several empty half dozen boxes should should have her 12 eggs in one large box despite her meekly explaining she needs two smaller boxes because she's buying for her neighbour. His shouting at the customers that he's been up since 5 in the morning (although apparently he doesn't need to). His poor assistant and his daughter are mortified. But the eggs are delicious!

Nature Glittering with Frost

Another early morning walk – this time substantially longer than yesterday. The great thing about the ground being as hard as iron is there's no need to clean muddy shoes when I get home. I'm going to be very easy on myself with this second iteration of 'One Mile From Home'. If time doesnt allow for a piece of art, a photo will have to do. Yes I know photography is art, but that doesn't mean that my photography is art.

Beautiful Day

A lovely clear, cold, crisp day. The dog-walkers were out in force. Unfortunately a tiny blood vesel in my nose did not appreciate the cold. So a nose-bleed ensued. This isn't the actual blood – but you get the picture.

One Mile From Home is Back!

As I went out for a walk this miserable rainy New Year's day I was reminded of my 2006-2007 year long One mile From Home art project, and how good it was to make myself get outside once a day, create a piece of art, and write a blog post every day for a year. And I thought why not restart the project again. A lot has happened since 2007. In 2008 the Woodland Trust bought 850 acres of the farmland that I walked in most days. Trees have been planted, a unique arboretum containing all 60 of the UK's native trees has been created, so many of the scenes I saw in 2006-2007 are transformed. The children who featured frequently in 2007 have all grown up and left home (including Robin). Daughter Flo is a teacher, has married and now has a beautiful one year old daughter, who I am lucky enough to help look after. Hugo lives in Leeds with his fiancée and works with bikes. Tom lives with his boyfriend in London and is currently working in a homelessness shelter. And Xavier also lives in London and is pursuing the life of a musician. I'm now in receipt of the state pension, but stll don't consider myself to be retired. I have had two knee replacements, so I'm not going to be too strict about walking a mile and back this time. Nor am I going to be particularly strict about creating art in situ. It'll be enough to have some kind of walk outside, and to create some kind of art related to the walk. I realise that almost nobody will be looking at this blog – i mean that was a thing of the 2000s wasn't it? But I do so like creating specifically for a blog. There'll probably also be some cross-posting to Instagram and FaceBook. If any of you still follow blogs do please comment. But I'll probably approve comments first to block spam. If you prefer Instagram I can be found at @julieoakleydesign. So this first picture is one of my favourite trees. It's featured many times in my blogs over the years.

Over a year later – the exhibition

My two eldest, Flo and Tom have set up the Oakley Gallery and their first big project is an exhibition of the One Mile from Home sketches and paintings. This is the poster/flyer that they got me to do for the forthcoming exhibition. I can’t quite believe the madness of having an exhibition put on in my house! If you want to download a nice higher resolution pdf version of this which has a detailed description of the project on the reverse you can download it here. And of course you are all welcome.

And finally…

If this is your first visit to this blog, you’ve arrived at the end of a year long project. In April 2006 I set the challenge ‘Walk a minimum of one mile from home. Record where you’ve been with a drawing, sculpture, photo or painting and then walk back. Every day for a year.’ To my great delight Alison and Penny in Australia (amongst others who eventually dropped by the wayside) joined me. Each day our lives touched at our daily posts, sometimes observing the same things and sometimes showing each other the uniqueness of our own environments. So now, for me , the challenge is over, and the drawing of where I started most of my walks is on the last post below. However if you’d like to experience our year in the order in which it happened, do click on the archives in the side bar, starting with April 2006. If you’d like to see regularly updated work, please visit my other blog, Julie’s Pictures.

Walk Three Hundred and Sixty-Five – Home

Click to see bigger

That’s it, the house in the middle is the starting point for nearly all of the walks. We moved the car (which is normally parked in front) down the road so that I could see the house properly. Robin asked if I wanted the tandem and trailer (just behind the wall) moved, but I liked the reminder of the cycle trips this morning and at lunch, taking Xavier to and from nursery. In the winter there’s usually a pile of boots either side of the door behind the brick arch.
At this moment I am at the downstairs window facing the birdtable, typing at my computer. After painting this I went for my walk round the bluebell wood. A funny sad, wistful walk. The adventure is over, thank you one and all, especially Alison and Penny for joining me, Robin for putting up with our lives having to revolve around me fitting in my walk and sketch, Katherine for being so supportive, Hashi for taking the baton from me and all of you – you know who you all are – who visited regularly and added your thoughts and support.

380mm x 225mm pen and watercolour on W&N watercolour paper