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...!