A Twilight of Owl thoughts...

Here is a little exercise in mark making that I enjoyed... I love owls and love hearing their gently wistful calls float upon the evening. We have a little ghost of a barn owl that likes to fly low in the fields aroung our house, and the calls of tawny owls - the Toowit and the answering Twoooo drift from one end of the field to the other back and forth.

We used to live in a cottage with an ancient Yew tree right outside the bedroom window, and would often be woken in the night to the wild exclamation of the resident screech owl! I didn't mind at all and find the sound of owl calls in the night strangely comforting, it makes me smile before going back to sleep.
I love the twilight, the transitions of shadow and sky so evocative...


Looking out of my window as I write, the sky has turned an eldritch eggshell green at the hedgeline. The young fronded buds of my young silver birch sapling are etched in fragile black like hand drawn ink lines against the sky that deepens through the soft-glowing green, soaring turquoise and up into the richest prussion blue...
There is a single star pricked out above the black silhoetted limbs of my apple tree that seem to yearn skywards towards that very point of light....

I love my westward window - big victorian sash just filled with sky and different every single evening. To watch the slow changes of the twilight through this frame is far better than any television nullity!

I'm not quite sure what this post was originally intended to be about, but on glimpsing the sky from my window it has turned into the thoughts that followed... hope you don't mind!
But to part I'd like to show the wonderful art of Jan Nesbitt.

'Owl light' By Jan Nesbitt

This print is hanging on my wall and I love it! Please do visit Jan's website to see more of her beautiful fine art and illustration. If you are from the west country she is also holding an open studio event in conjunction with the Cloth Road Arts Week between the 1st and 9th of May, contact her through her website for the details.

Now that I've come to the end of this post the sky has shuffled off its vibrant veils of colour and shed them below the hills. My window has filled with blind velvet darkness and the land has drawn close its secretive cloak of shadows. I'll be listening for owls...!

Today's life drawing and the usual trouble with legs!

Here are this morning's life drawings... I really enjoyed this session - things are slowly coming back to me, though as always I had tremendous problems with legs!
I always end up leaving the legs and feet til last because I find them hard, then I run out of time to get them worked out!
Perhaps I'll have to do some legs and feet studies and force myself to learn...!

3 minute pose - very dynamic by our great model

5 minutes

5 minutes again - ran out of time on the dreaded forshortened legs, arrgh!

25 minute pose with one completed leg!

30 minute pose

That's all folks!

Watch out for elephants in the woods!

Yesterday, to round off the children's easter holidays we discovered Brokers Wood near Westbury and the White Horse, a fantastic place I hadn't realised was just on our doorstep all these years!
There are lots of great rustic adventure playgrounds hidden all through the woods with little rope walks and bridges over streams...

Also there were lots of painted elephants hidden around the woods to find, each one decorated by a different local school. They're a bit like the 'Bladud's Pigs' that were all around Bath...

The woods were wakening with violets, wood anenomes, celendines and the first early bluebells, and there were lots of strange little mossy houses nestled away in the slanting sunlight.

The children had fun and so did I...


Back to school tomorrow...

Long lost projects of creative writings...

(The Raven is just because a post without a picture seems a bit forlorn!)

The text in my banner says art and creative writing...

I have been wondering whether I would be brave enough to show any of my writing here - the thought is quite a terrifying one!

Over the course of about eight years on and off I slowly taught myself about writing. I have a passion for language and ancient literature, especially the rhythms of anglo-saxon metre and the way they would craft the sounds within the language... So in fits and starts I wrote a fair quantity of my own Tolkien-esque fantasy. I doubt these old projects will ever get finished or see the light of day, I haven't worked on them at all since having children and it would all need serious reworking (or scrapping!)

I would have loved to have done a creative arts course or even just creative writing, but never have, so have never had any real guidance or objective critisism outside of immediate family.
In fact my main source of constructive critism was my poor long suffering husband who doesn't like my writing at all and is dyslexic - he always found it too over descriptive and heavy going!
I think if I do come back to writing for adults, I'm probebly better suited to short stories or prose-poetry. My unfinished 'novels' if I ever dared to call them such a thing, just kept getting bigger and bigger, and the plots too convoluted and it all got beyond me!

Anyway, enough stalling! Although I struggled to rein in my plots, the parts of the writing I loved doing and still love, were the descriptive passages that moved across time and season, transitions of twilight and sunrise, the interactions of elemental forces...
So I thought I'd very tentatively throw a few out there that work out of context to show you how I write and see what thoughts if any you might have...

Here are the first few lines of a prologue...

A breath of time.
The quickening of Skysong, ceaseless, unbound
The long primal earthcry of Mountain, of rock
Storm, the grief of the land, the voice
Unheard through the blizzard’s rage

Twixt earth and sky a green and voiceless wind rides the night, a whisper of all it has known, beckoning the tree that yearns at its roots, meandering through stone, rising to the cold flanks of Mountain that ring with power.
Turning from those grim grey entities of rock and ice, the fickle wind challenges the sky, a moonsome shout beneath the cryptic mazing of stars that splinter their mysteries to darkness...


And here a couple of transitionary passages...


… The forest breathed the snows, the Mountain bore the blizzard, hawk and hare journeyed the darksome shades of winter. The gales perished towards the dawn of summer...

And...


… The bitter winter wrung out its storms, swept back its whirling cloak of ice to relinquish the land to life once more, only to leap roaring from the north as the forest turned to blood, eager to strangle away the green to another season’s sorrows.
Such was the eternal battle and all the land the battleground to suffer the rage of polar blizzard and spring flood, while sun nurtured the land and strove summer long to heal the wounds of winter.
The long turnings of many skies passed, and passed again, revolving around the silently shrieking crater of Modhrin. The Mountain sharpened itself against the sky, unheeding as the forest crept struggling further up its ragged flanks into wind and bitter hardship. The Twin Moons fought and died, fought and died, reborn from starvation again and yet again, as the wild elder clans watched for omens in the night.

That'll do for now! I am feeling rather nervous about this post and whether or not its such a good idea, but if I get brave enough I might post some more complete excerpts next time. I'd be interested in your thoughts, good or bad... Please feel free to comment freely!


(These writings are my personal original work. Please respect my copyright, thankyou!)

Today's life drawings...

Well I still don't feel I've got back into the flow of it yet... and the others' work made me feel very amateurish today! But I enjoyed it anyway!

2 minutes - the shortest pose and the drawing I'm most happy with!

4 minutes

30 minutes of tricky foreshortening! But I enjoyed the shadows...

20 minutes - a bit ropey!

And finally another 30 minutes of awkward perspective... there's a lot wrong with that left leg and she seems to be levitating ever so slightly! Oh well!

Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky

This is an amazing film that I was first introduced to at Foundation Art college... One of the tutors - Jackie Harding, came into the studio and said to us all, ' You have to come and watch this film, it will change your life...'

It is not light watching by any means but it is quite profound and the artisitic sequences are incredible, dark, edgy, atmospheric, disturbing... with a deep metaphoric philosophy.

As I understood it, it was the meeting or conflict of science and art, creation and destruction in the 'Zone', a place where the human soul is laid bare. It is deeply compelling, and the cinematic direction is genius...

I last saw this almost 15 years ago and yet every so often something will bring it back up from my sub-concious... So, last night I was watching a DVD of Rush in concert (I am a massive Rush fan!) and there's one or two of their songs that have a feeling about them reminscent to me anyway, of Stalker - edgy, slightly anguished... (for any Rush fans out there I'm talking about 'Subdivisions' 'Distant Early Warning' and 'Red Sector A')

It made me think it really is about time I watched this film again so I think I'll have to go and buy it! 'Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky' I really do recommend it...

Here is a particularly good clip...

Life drawing, spring sunshine and sleeping Trolls...

Well, this weeks life drawing didn't get off to a great start when I arrived late and missed all the 2 minute warm ups! So I didn't quite settle into it and still feel like I haven't quite got my hand in again with it yet...

She was a great model and did some lovely poses, but I couldn't quite do her justice this week...

Still, its nice to be doing life drawing again regardless of the results!

I seem to be posting a lot of walks so far, but the warm spring weather seems such a treat after the long winter, it's hard to resist!
When I walked this way in March I heard an owl call unexpectantly in the wood at noon, flute-like, soft through trees still bare limbed. Today we heard woodpeckers rat-tatatating, and constant birdsong - caws and croaks, flutes and chittiks, many layered melodies of lilting laughter...
The woods are wakening, buds greening, even butterflies today. I should know the name of this plant but it has slipped my mind for now!

We followed deer slots all through the woods, me, Red Riding Hood and a black witch's cat...

Then back home again over the Troll's bridge, quickly before our wellies woke him to scold at the sun!

Tales of Eostre and a wander in the woods...

'Eostre and the wounded bird'

copyright of Carrie Osborne.

Here is an Easter sketch for you!

I'm sure most of you already know of the tale of the bird Eostre transformed into a hare... and although I know it has no real historical basis and is more of a 'modern' myth as such, I like it and tell it to my children for the sheer pleasure of its story telling ...
In brief...

...Once when spring was late in coming, a young girl found a bird dying in the snow, its wings frozen with winter's frost. She called on Eostre, the Goddess of the Dawn to help and so she came over a rainbow bridge, bringing spring with her robes of sunlight and warmth and melting the snow. Eostre healed the bird but could not make it whole, so to save its life she transformed it into a snow hare. The hare who was once a bird, still laid eggs but of rainbow colours and gave them to Eostre in gratitude...

Eostre is also said to have Hare attendants to carry her lanterns of dawn-light...

In our world, the sun shone long enough today for easter egg hunts in the garden and a winding walk through the woods...

We saw buds on trees, deer slots, ferns clinging to moss clad limbs, sodden badger sets and a fallen silver birch with bark that shone ghost pale in every colour of mother-of-pearl. (But alas my camera just wasn't up to capturing that!)

Happy Easter!

Wellie wanderings and weather...

Today the blustery sun and showers made my heart leap a little so I took the children to one of the places I used to love walking in my art college days, full of water, gnarly roots and mossy valleys...

I used to meander my way alone, rain or shine most days in hard frost or summer haze, winding in my thoughts to the sounds and rhythms of the land, wind and water, turbulent sky, buzzard cry.
It's nice to watch my children share what I cherished then, discover all the hidden places I've long known, learning the land so familiar to me.

And today with the rain at our backs, a gleeful wind and the land alive with spring, we walked downstream towards a rainbow bridge.