Make your mind up time

 I have been following the campaign to vote for our 'national bird' here in the UK and the shortlist of the final ten has just been announced. Please take a look here at the contenders. Running parallel to the General Election we'll be given the results on the morning after May 7th. I can summon more enthusiasm for an avian election  than a political one at the present time! My favourite bird changes with the season but I love them all so I don't want to influence your vote in any way ...........                

   
 Naturally, once I'd put my cross on the virtual page I had to get the White Album off the shelves and play the above  a few times with the result that I then had that 'ear worm' for the rest of the day. I could not stop singing it!

There's a wonderful poem by John Clare about the blackbird that contains the lines :
'The blackbird is a bonny bird, I love his mourning suit, And song in the Spring meadows heard, As mellow as the flute' . For his song alone he gets my vote.

So excited about the eclipse tomorrow morning and we're told it will be clear and bright here and we should get a high chance of it. I hope so. I was watching Stargazing Live last night on the BBC and then had to go out and look for Jupiter and its moons. The sky was alive with stars. So beautiful. Only Europe as such will see the eclipse tomorrow but miss it and it won't be coming around again until something like 2034. For those that don't get the opportunity to experience it  I might post another Beatles song. Perhaps the lovely George (always my favourite) singing 'Here Comes the Sun'?

Pushing on

 My key objective this year was to improve my drawing, and I have been doing exactly that, pushing myself to overcome the lack of confidence that I know has held me back from sharing my endeavours. I can draw and draw well but I can still hear that art teacher when I was 14  telling me that 'left handers cannot draw and you are no exception'. My common sense side tells me this is rubbish but I suspect I would not be the first person to still be carrying the baggage of negative teachers' comments around with me many years after they were spoken.

I am lucky to have made a great friend locally in artist Maggie Brown, who runs fabulous residential painting holidays here in Pembrokeshire . She sees my left handed-ness as a positive asset and has a confidence in my ability that I am humbled by. She has dragged me out sketching in the landscape and last week I even attended a three day painting course with well known local artist David Tress, something I had to overcome my fear of drawing in front of others to do. I'm not sure yet whether I want to be a painter, but I do want to be a printmaker who draws better and I have already learned so much from these two wonderful artists.

Both have made me want to go out into the landscape with new eyes and I am now being far more observant. On a clearer day I am going back to the top of Foel Eryr which I climbed yesterday. It is a bronze age burial mound from roughly 2000BC that is one of the higher spots on the Preselis, site of the bluestones used at Stonehenge. It was cold in the wind yesterday and it was not the day to linger  at the cairn on the top. The views all around were not bad but on a better day could be fabulous.

I know that I don't want to slavishly draw the view but I do want to return and capture the essence of the place. I feel as if my eyes are suddenly open and I am seeing everything differently. I am also beginning to feel differently about my drawing and I'm really loving using different media and approaches. If I could find that art teacher again I'd show them how wrong they were!