Uffington Hare

The new picture, following on from the Questing Vole, shows a hare looking up at Lepus, the constellation of the hare, below Orion and pursued by Sirius (though you can't see them in this pic, just in case you were looking). I drew the picture then scanned it and coloured it using Paint Shop Pro. This is good for those deep, smooth colours, as you see; I'd made two starts at this picture using watercolour, and put them aside as it just wasn't the medium for the picture I had in mind. 

As several people asked if it was going to be available as a card, I thought I'd better get some printed up; the cards won't be ready for a few days yet, but I've just picked up some prints and they can be got here on Etsy

vol de nuit

 Sometimes on a winter night here, you can see the wild geese flying high overhead, lit by the city lights. The first time I saw them, I was in the back garden drinking coffee before setting off on my motorbike to join a ship; I felt like a fellow traveller. Last winter I saw them when I was up on Observatory Hill admiring the snowy landscape.

Vol de Nuit is a book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery; checking up, it turns out it's not one I've read, and it ends badly. I used it as the title here because of that feeling you get when travelling at night, which reminds me of the mood of his books. And of course it sounds dead arty. Pretentious? Moi? Oui, cher lecteur.


...here's the soundtrack for a night journey- Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers: Roadrunner.

busy

busy, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

just at the moment, the gurt A0 drawing board that looms over my room like a big looming thing is overwhelmed with stationery, as I package up yet more cards. It seemed daft to keep getting them printed them in dribs and drabs, so I took a deep breath and ordered 500.... so, thanks to the economy of scale, I am selling them in my Etsy shop at £15 for 20 cards.

They are also available at £5 for 5. Or, heck, as few as you want!

Just sayin'.

back to work then

It's back to the drawing board, here at Schloss Marland. In a good way. Probably. This is another go at the three hares motif. And yesterday's picture was inspired by Alan Summers' haiku (below).

I've started looking into ways of selling pictures, too, before this room disappears under the teetering mounds of paintings, drawings and tubes of old paint that I have to fight my way through to get to the keyboard and type this. It's all rather messy. I've opened an Etsy account, but had to stop because I destroyed my credit card in error. As you do.

virgin snow
a fox makes prints
for the morning

time out

Goodness, what fun and games we've been having in Brissle. We had a bit of snow last week, the first time in ages that it's happened here. So we made the most of it; some people gamely walked for miles through the snow to get to work, while the rest skived off and had fun. The hillier parts of Bristol became extremely slippery and were closed to traffic, which meant that we could walk in the road, and very nice it was too, ...

...although plenty of drivers ignored the notices. They were almost certainly Very Important People Going Somewhere Vital, because they looked so serious and stern in a "get out of my way, foolish pedestrian" sort of way.



..here's one, being overtaken by some cyclists...

...and, since the schools were closed, this is what we got up to...

Oh well, all good things come to an end. The snow turned to slush, then melted away; I dug out the Trav, and started it up... the electrics misbehaved something chronic, until I'd given it a good spraying with WD40 and a good long run.


..and look! Snowdrops! With snow!


...so there we are. What I Did On My Holidays.