Do you still think that way about me now?

Hmmm, I'm having a pretty uninspirational year art-wise :/ Just cannot work up the interest at the minute...




Doodle-scribble-shape things...




...crappy disembodied deer head (except that it looks more like a cow's head, really, a deer's head is snout-on, not forehead-on >.<)...




...a depressed, blank profile-person...




...and a plant with some... thing hanging over it.

*le sigh*

Watching The Zoo, I have learned that a chimpanzee showing you his/her butt is a "friendly gesture".




HAI THERE, EVERYBODY! I LUV U ALL VER' VER' MUCH!

(Image taken from here - copyright John X/Flickr.)

This Monday, I like... the Finvoy Road - specifically this part:


Image taken from Google Maps Street View feature - image capture May 2012, Google Maps and Street View copyright Google 2014.


It's just so pretty: the avenue of ash-trees, fields gently spreading out on either side, the long straight road, the gentle dip and rise. I drive this way from time to time due to my work and I always look forward to this particular stretch because it makes me feel good about the world.

...Not a lot more to say, really. :)

Ok, this will be the last nature-based one for a while. This Monday, I like... ash trees.


Left hand image taken from Challice Consulting - copyright unknown; right hand image taken from Science Photo Library - copyright Bob Gibbons/Science Photo Library.


Again, like hawthorn, this is a case of familiarity breeding appreciation; there are a lot of ash trees around my family's farm, growing in the hedgerows. They're tall and slim, with trunks as grey as stones. I still find that bizarre - shouldn't tree trunks be brown, not grey? While I was growing up, part of our boundary ditch was lined by about eight or nine ash trees, interspersed amongst the hawthorn. I could hear the water in the ditch chattering away as it flowed over stones, an irresistable sound to a child. As I tried to find a hole through the hedge where I could glimpse the miniature rapids below, the ashes were a safe and non-thorny support to lean against. I will always associate them with the sound of running water, with things hidden and half-seen. (Dad recently cut that hedge back completely, partly to get rid of dead wood, partly so he could clean the ditch out. The water is now fully visible from the bank - and somehow, it doesn't sound half so pretty or intriguing or noisy as it did when it was behind those ash trees *sadface*.)

They have beautiful leaves, simple, elegant. Ask a child to draw a leaf, they'll draw something similar to an ash leaf: a long, smooth-edged oval, pointed at both ends with a line up the middle and veins branching off in chevrons. It's like having defied convention with their stone-grey trunks, they decided to produce the most archetypal leaf ever! Arranged in neat rows of pairs, one on the left, one on the right, they look like outstretched arms, with a single one at the top for the head. I also like their colour; I prefer light, fresh greens that glow a little yellow in the sun. And then there are those sooty-black buds. I had understood that the reason for the name "ash" was because the buds made it look like someone had tried to singe the tree, but Wikipedia says no, the name actually derives from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "spear"... I prefer my explanation. There's something cheering about a tree which looks burnt and damaged but is actually thriving.

Ashes are my favourite trees. I only hope that the ones Dad cut back will grow up again and make that ditch something secret and magical again...

Ok, I may be slightly obsessed with flowers at the moment. I blame all the wonderful spring sunshine we've been having lately. Anyway, this Monday, I like... gorse.


Image taken from Wikipedia. Photograph is copyright Andy Rogers


Although I know it better by the local name of "whin", so that's the term I'll use for the rest of this post. I prefer "whin" anyway; it sounds... well, windy and airy and fairy-like, where "gorse" sounds drab and harsh and earthbound.

Actually, both names suit it rather well. Whin grows on land that is otherwise pretty bleak: bog and rock and moor and peat moss, the kind of place where the predominant colours are shades of brown muddied with grey-green, and the soil is poor. Its leaves are replaced almost entirely by wicked green thorns, long and straight like needles. Exposed to the worst the weather can throw at it, it has remarkable resilience. For instance, there was a great hedge of whin growing along the upper end of our road. Then about five years ago, we had an extremely bad winter: snow, ice, the works. It looked like the whin had been killed completely. A few scattered skeletons of bushes remained but there wasn't a hint of green. And yet... those skeletons didn't break or rot away. They stayed. Two years later, some of them started to look green again. Two years after that, new bushes had grown. This year, all the bushes are out in bloom and it looks like we're getting our hedge back.

So yeah, it's tough and it's windswept and it looks awesome covered in cobwebs. But let's talk about the flowers because they're my favourite part. It's not just their colour - that gorgeous rich yellow - or their shape - those pert little capsules like ladies' bonnets. It's their smell. Whin smells liks coconut. Really, really like coconut. Before that bad winter I talked about earlier, I loved being along the upper end of our road when the whin was in bloom because the perfume was so strong. It was like walking into a tropical paradise - apart from the fact that I was surrounded by rush-encrusted fields and scrubby brambles, not white sand beaches and palm trees.

I would later come across an interesting twist on this in The Mermaid's Child by Jo Baker, where the protagonist encounters the scent of whin first and only years later smells a coconut, stating, "Coconuts, to me, will always smell of gorse." It startled me to realise that I really ought to think that way too, but don't... So now when I breathe in that dry, soft, sweet scent, it kinda twists my thinking upside-down, makes me consider all the knowledge and experiences I have just because I happen to live at the right time in the right place.

Whin is a golden blaze of defiant sweetness in places where sweetness is the last thing you expect to find. Maybe in two more years' time, I can walk up the road and plunge into the full coconut experience again. I live in hope :)

This is just way too pretty not to share :D

This week, I decided not to draw any people but concentrate on objects, animals or just patterns of shapes.




Saturday/Sunday's is a bit of a hash; I was tired and had a stiff shoulder, and the fox's eyes ended up being in the middle of the big black line, which spoiled things >:/ I'm pretty pleased with Friday's landscape, although it's maybe a bit too busy to give a proper sense of perspective. Tuesday's stylised swans-and-stars and Thursday's party cake turned out better than I expected. But my real favourite this week is the lion's-head candlestick from Monday:




Again, if you want a larger version, just click on it and then twice on the magnifying glass icon in the bottom right corner.

Let's start with the obvious, shall we?

This Monday, I like... blue skies.


Image taken from the National Physical Laboratory

Well, who doesn't? After all, blue skies mean warm sunshine, tropical climes and pleasant, summery weather, right?

Not necessarily. Frosty days can have blue skies: an intense and burning blue, like the cold has scoured the sky clean with a Brillo pad. Windy days can have blue skies: blustering clouds about until they've gone thin as cobwebs, while watery-white sunshine winks on window panes. Even rainy days can have blue skies: you're still getting wet but underneath that last dark cloud there's a gap of clean pale blue which holds the promise of rainbows and blinding-gold puddles. Temperatures can range from freezing-your-toes-off through cold, chilly, cool and mild-but-I-wouldn't-go-out-without-a-scarf - the sky is still blue.

For me, a blue sky will make me feel better regardless of the actual weather. In fact, I prefer cold-weather blue sky. I remember one particularly icy day when I was at university; I was going to an exam, taking care on the slippery pavements, but I was incredibly happy because the sky was the most beautiful, deep, sparkling blue. Everything looked brighter, sharper, fresher. I remember sitting in the exam room - a basement-level canteen with one wall made entirely of windows, looking out on a sunken concrete courtyard - looking up at that sky and feeling like anything, anything, was possible, that life was full of the most amazing, most joyous opportunities just on the horizon, waiting. I think it was also my birthday that day; I had nothing planned and there was no partying done, but that sky felt like a party in itself. I remember it as one of the best days of my life - all because the sky was blue.

This past weekend, I happened to look up from my computer just in time to see a buzzard skim low across the back field and then, with two lazy flaps, rise into a tree and land. I raced downstairs to grab the binoculars and get a closer look.

Oh, it was beautiful: broad-chested, marked in brown and black bars against white, with a vivid yellow bill and eyes. It skulked among the leaves, wings hunched, looking around nervously. And with good reason; after a few minutes, two magpies arrived and started hassling it, hopping about the branches. (Sidebar: I'm rather fond of magpies - except when they start making that smoker's-cough noise in the early morning outside my window.) The buzzard bore it for a while but then it just dropped from the tree and flew away, low to the ground.

I wish I could have gotten some pictures but (a) I didn't know where my camera was and (b) it doesn't have a good enough zoom to take a shot at such a distance (I was viewing all this through the kitchen window). But it lifted my heart to see such a lovely and unexpected sight. I love watching birds in flight. The elegance, the control, that sharp silhouette of wings and tail. And when they're flocking, the way they wheel and glide, rise and fall in eerie, rippling coordination, makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise. We live in an amazing and lovely world, and (at the risk of sounding like one of those slighty manic/creepy Christians) I am very grateful to God for that.

Finally got some of the photos uploaded!

( Snow! )

The thaw started today; there's water dripping everywhere.