It’s been wild here, wet and windy. On Friday, in the darkening late afternoon I slipped and slid my way up to the track behind the reservoir. To the west the sky was smouldering with remnants of the sun. I had cleaned out the fire earlier that morning and was struck by how brilliantly the dying embers glowed amongst the black ash. This sky was the same.
Afternoon Sky over the Reservoir Jan 3rd
The wind was tremendous and deafening. Rooks and crows hung motionless, facing into the wind then were tossed away and intermittent blasts of icy rain splattered my cold cheeks.
I thought I should turn back lest I get blown away, shredded by flailing thorny brambles, snatched up by dark forces or just sucked into some slippery and bottomless clay bog. But this type of weather has its own seductive beauty. It is exhilarating and elemental and dangerous. It makes you imagine that you too are wild and free. I am getting back to sketching and carry a small sketchbook in my pocket, so in the shelter of the wood I made these quick sketch notes.
Dark clouds rolling away over to the horizon. The bare stems of cow parsley are light against the dark land.
Wind tossed birds.
Choppy waters with bouncing ducks.
Swampy inland pools with ducks, just like the mangroves in FLA.
A5 sketchbook, Pilot Vpoint and a waterbrush.
Let in the light
After 6 years of patching up, adding on and dabbling with HTML it was time to shake up Pencil and Leaf to go hand in hand with (hopefully) a new website. I had looked at the blog recently and thought this is all way too cosy.
So it is a little different now, and what a relief. It’s like cutting your hair or pruning an old shrub, letting in the air, the light and space for new development. I could not part with the Lizard so it was just a redraw and redesign. However I am no web designer so it’s an excruciatingly slow process and still in progress. The website, simple though it is, will be some time yet.
But I like having the different blogs and sites… They are like starting new and exciting sketchbooks and are far more organised then my hellish piles of notes and sketches.
I love your little lizard, the way his tail curls through the pencils is what drew me in to your blog in the first place. Thanks for keeping him. The blog face lift is nice.
Laureen
I'm busy pruning out dead posts, 1 in 4 is gone. SO much easier that sorting the piles of paper.
Hi Laureen. I had to keep the lizard although we don't see so many here in the UK. but the blog make over was like a real breath of fresh air.
Diana": you are so right. I am a bit of a paper hoarder. Pressing the delete key is so much easier.. and I could possibly make little buttons. I had already re sketched the "mail me when I got your comment. They are very easy to do and you can use any picture.