Partrishow

...a remote church in the Black Mountains, with the shrine of St Issui, and, in the valley below, a holy well. A good place, and I like going there. There's all sorts of things going on in the picture, but I'll leave them for you to find and put your own story on. (Click on the picture to see it large)

A picture for the year's turning. I've been thinking of how to do this picture for ages, and then just got stuck in and hoped for the best. There are bits of it I'm really happy with, and I'm also happy that I've started the new year with a new picture. Even though it meant I was very antisocial on New Year's Eve.

I've got some prints done, and they are available in my Etsy shop. There are two sizes, small (roughly A4) and large (roughly A3). 

There's a Fibonacci spiral in there somewhere, by the way!

Flying Fish

 

Sometimes, it's nice to do something a bit different, and paint a picture from your imagination. I did this picture last week; I saw flying fish and phosphorescence in the Indian Ocean ten years ago, and I used to have a little boat rather like this one, and still have the storm lantern. But that's as far as actual events go. That's the House Teenager there at the tiller....

There's a print of it over on Etsy.

Here's the first flying fish I ever saw; it had landed on deck during the night. It wasn't long after that I saw groups of them, flying out of the way of the boat as we zoomed along; their wings stretched out tight and shiny in the sunlight.

..and this is a drawing of plankton flashing as we zoomed by; I think this is called bioluminescence, and I don't know enough about it to know if it's a different thing from phosphorescence.... it was like silent fireworks, exploding underwater. And, like so much else far out in the ocean, it was something rich and strange.

sheltering at Fraserburgh

sheltering at Fraserburgh, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.


"Lands End to St David's Head, including the Bristol Channel: W or NW, 5 or 6, decreasing 3 or 4, showers, fair, good"

Just listening to the Inshore Waters Forecast on the radio, paying special attention to my local sea area, while finishing my first cup of tea and getting ready for a new picture. An early start. The garden blackbird is getting lazy, and didn't start singing till just after 4 o' clock today.

I was hunting out some reference pictures in my big box of paintings, and dug out this sketch. And, since it's so different to the scene from here this morning, I thought I'd scan it. Working on the Karen Bravo, a Western Geophysical seismic survey ship, in the North Sea, we'd often run for shelter in the firths of the Scottish east coast when the weather brewed up. Here we are, anchored off Fraserburgh on a wild night in January (I think), 1983 (ish). This is the view from the bridge; over there are a couple of small ships, also sheltering. We'd sit up late, partying in the cabins, and then there would be a hush as we tuned into the after-midnight shipping forecast. "Viking, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Westerly, Force 10...." and there'd be a cheer, and we'd go back to partying.

getting out a bit

Here's a picture I'm quite pleased with. It's Jet the retriever. The picture was a commission from a friend, for her brother's birthday. R shares his birthday with the opening of the grouse shooting season, which seems somehow appropriate...

It's been a good time for watching the night sky, lately. Last week I was down at Richard's, in Oxfordshire, and I was camping in the garden. At 0200, I looked out and saw a perfectly clear sky full of stars and Milky Way, so I shuffled out a bit and lay snug in my sleeping bag, watching as shooting stars flared across the sky- it was the height of the Perseid meteor shower.

In the city, where the darkness of the night is diluted by the loom of the city lights, or on a cloudy night, if a shooting star were to go shooting across the sky then you might see a sudden glow or a flicker in the corner of your eye and think "Was that a shooting star, or was thart my eyes playing tricks on me?" And you just would not know for sure.

But here in this garden in Oxfordshire the stars were sharp and glinting, and the shooting stars zipped suddenly and silently across the night. If the night had been a big piece of silk, and Saladin had been on the other side, showing Richard the Lionheart how sharp his scimitar was by slashing across the cloth so that the bright mediaeval sunlight suddenly streamed through the line of the blade, it would have been a bit like that. Suddenly there, suddenly gone.

I saw six or seven shooting stars, and then I got sleepy, and my blinks got longer until when I opened my eyes again I saw that it had clouded over, so I wriggled back into the tent.

Last night I was a bit wakeful, so I went up onto the roof. No shooting stars this time, but just before 4:00 a bright white light- the brightest thing I've ever seen in the night sky- moved silently eastwards, passing overhead. "Ooh, a satellite" I thought. And then I went to sleep, while tawny owls hooted from the Downs.

When I woke up again it was cloudy, and there was a long red streak on the horizon. And my sleeping bag was a bit dewy. Time to go down.

I did a bit of online research, and found that what I'd seen was the International Space Station. By this time, they'd already been round the world a few more times, and were over the Indian Ocean, somewhere off Madagascar. And as I'm writing this, they're zipping past Spain. Crikey. And all before breakfast, too. Good morning, Alexander, Tracey, Mikhail, Fyodor, Shannon and Doug! Busy lot, aren't you?

moonlight bear

"Slugs is to badgers as rice is to the Chinese"

I've finished the picture, and am very happy with it. I was worried about how the hawthorn tree would turn out; I blanked out the blossom with masking fluid, which I also used to frame the night sky and the moon. It took ages to get the latex solution out of the brush.... I'd never even heard of masking fluid until a few years ago; it's jolly useful. But a pig to get out of a brush.

I also had to put off painting the sky until the shops opened, so that I could get some indigo watercolour. And then hummed and hah-ed about whether I should get some Cotman watercolour at £1.99 a tube, or Artists watercolour at £5.99 for a tiny tube. I settled for the Cotman. It seemed to work OK. (I once made a nasty mess using some watercolour from LIDL. You can't be too careful. Well .....perhaps you can be too careful. Anyway...)

Still learning.

This picture is for Geraldine's next book, The Case of the Curious Crow. Here's a link to our last book, The Coffee Thrush

rise up singing

Today I finished this picture for Katy-Louise, who kindly gave permish for me to post it up here. Hi Katy-Louise!

As a bit of a pagan myself, I feel rather untouched by the Easter malarkey. Not that I felt particularly affected by it in my innocent youth; we'd sing "There Is A Green Hill Far Away" and we'd get a Cadbury's Cream Egg at Sunday School, and I at least would feel rather sick by the time I'd finished eating it.

The idea of a great outbreak of self-flagellation followed by rejoicing, as practiced by the more enthusiastic Christians, seems a bit excessively theatrical. Though I'm happy to join in the celebration of rebirth, which is a pretty pagan notion too. So I was glad to be invited to join some friends for lunch yesterday, Easter Sunday, which was a very happy occasion. They're Catholics...

There was another of those odious spokesmen for the Catholic Church on the radio this morning, mistaking criticism of the Church's leaders' history of failure to act upon child abuse by priests, and the continued presence within the Church of people who are at least guilty by their failure to act when they could have acted, for some great anti-Catholic campaign.

Funny lot.

I quite like my Catholic friends, and they are good and decent people. It's a shame that their Church is apparently being run by a bunch of men who seem more interested in power than in truth or justice, and who seem to think that they occupy ground of sufficient elevation to allow them to make pronouncements about People Like Me. Silly arses.

Never mind. It is springtime, and not everyone is nasty. Rejoice, therefore!

Off to a poetry reading this evening, where I shall read out my Egret triolet, which is possibly fairly spiritual. And possibly just a poem about birdwatching. Decide for yourself, gentle reader! It's in the next post down.

going to the zoo

I think I've finished this picture, and I'm both quite pleased with it and aware that I could do better, which is probably a good result.

On 2nd February there's an event at Bristol Zoo, where Geraldine Taylor will be reading from The Coffee Thrush and talking about bird song and adventures in wildlife; there will also be some poetry from Nick Winn, the Peregrine Poet, whose poems have also graced the sides of buses in the Bristol area. And I'll be doing a sort of son et lumiere thing with my illustrations.