Croft Castle

After a cold, wet and windy start to the weekend the weather improved enough to enjoy springtime for a day and a half at Croft Castle recently. I was probably a week or so too early to enjoy the full beauty of the bluebells and wild garlic. Bluebells were everywhere though and the gorse was in full bloom where it had colonised the areas of the woods cleared a few years ago. I wonder how the National Trust are going to keep the spread of brambles at bay? The walled garden looked beautiful with apple blossom, wisteria, clematis, tulips and lots of other flowers in bloom.

Flowers: opposite-leaved saxifrage, violet, wood anemone, gorse, bluebell, wild garlic, wood speedwell and others (I knew I should have made notes, I got distracted by the shear pleasure of being out on a walk).

Birds: coal tit, buzzard, nuthatch, robin, blackbird, wren, treecreeper, possible song thrush singing, greater spotted woodpecker, small tweety things, black cap, grey wagtail, chiffchaff, pigeon/crows and I am sure a few other things.

Engagement

I feel as though I ought to write more. I miss doing so and more often than not the reason I don't write is because I don't know what to write about. My father didn't seem to pass on his genes of political discussion, debate and opinion to me. If he did, they are very rarely stimulated into action. This does frustrate me as most people around me seem to have the ability to discuss something in depth that leaves my brain struggling to cope with with sentence construction. I depends though. I don't think I am being particularly selfish in not wanting to engage with people. The opposite is true. I want to, but I don't NEED to. I am now wondering if I am reaching a point where this is no longer true. It is not easy and I usually have to make a conscious effort to engage.

This does, to my surprise, link up with what I had originally thought about writing today. Prejudice, descrimination, preconceived ideas and perceptions about other people that I might have. I'm not stupid enough to see the world through rose-tinted spectacles and know that I can't live in a utopia of love and peace. Not at the moment anyway. Part of my faith system suggests that I am tolerant and respectful of all living things. I should not separate out the conifered hills of Herefordshire, the walled garden at Croft Castle, the honeysuckle next to me in the garden or the Muslim/Asian/Eastern European communities around where I live. They are all part of the wholeness that makes up this earth. Everyone suffers emotional or physical pain inflicted intentionally or unintentionally upon them, that is part of life. I wonder if I have held onto things for too long. I wonder if my more people-centred/urban sketching artwork can help me....?

Trees

A rather scrappy sketch of some trees at Croft Castle a few days ago.

Different Realities

In about half an hour the sun will set behind the haze covered Welsh hills to the west of Croft Ambrey. Compared to yesterday’s almost blizzard like conditions up on Stow Hill near Knighton, the sunshine today was quite warm in those places sheltered from the cold breeze. I have spent the day walking meditatively around the walled garden at Croft Castle, Fishpool Valley and the woods up to Croft Ambrey. Just a slow relaxing plod looking at everything around me and enjoying a day when the sense of spring was tangible in the landscape. I could have stopped to draw so many times but my senses are just overwhelmed at being outside in a place I love. I just wanted to walk and sense everything around me.

This is all a distraction from the whirl of work and deadlines. I can drift away from the demands of modern work life and sit, stand or walk in my own little world. This is real place of course, but not part of my normal daily reality. It is a place that seems to be a significant ‘other place’ for me. It is another separate world in which I can exist but not really a place in which I live.

The wind in the scots pines above me is soothing and with a padded shirt, coat, scarf and gloves I feel fairly cosy. I am dry and so is the bench upon which I sit so I am not getting damp and cold. I expect the temperature will soon drop when the sun dips below the horizon.

When I head back down the hill I find I am bouncing along quite merrily. It’s like I have regained something of who I feel I would really be if I didn’t sit in front of a computer all day.

Cathedral of trees

I wrote this back in May when I was visiting Croft Castle. It was meant to be part of an illustration project but that has yet to materialise as I have moved onto other things. I had forgotten about it until now.

Cathedral of trees

Evensong: choirs of birds

I dance in the aisles

Here, ancients sang songs

Distant hills silhouetted

Golden sun setting

Stretching out my arms

Fingers touch gentle sounds

This land of my dreams

Dusk buzzard circling

Yellowhammers and lambs; calm

Long valley shadows

Slow, silently, step

Woodland senses awaken

Others show themselves

Croft Castle Illustration Project

In October 2015 I worked on an illustration project based around the National Trust property of Croft Castle in north Herefordshire. I visited the property over two days and recorded in words and pictures all the things that inspired me: people, the garden, wildlife, trees, and much more. This was a self-initiated piece of work that I had digitally printed as a 12 page A4 booklet. 60 copies were printed and given as Christmas presents to friends, family and the National Trust. Five sample pages are shown here.

Croft Castle

I have just spent two wonderful days at the National Trust property of Croft Castle in north Herefordshire. I have set myself an illustration, design and creative writing project based around what I could find there during that time. I did a few iPad illustrations, made copious notes and took loads of photographs based around all sorts of thinsgs: apples, fungi, people, trees, insects, autumn colours and much more. Over the next couple of months I aim to produce a collection of work and present it in an unusual way. In the meantime, the above skectch is of some of the many apple trees in the garden at Croft. The trees were heavily laden with small bright yellow apples and there are poppies in the foreground. I'll let you know when it is completed.

Dawn Chorus at Croft Castle, Herefordshire

A week ago found me at 5 am walking through Fishpool Valley on the Croft Castle estate listening to the dawn chorus. This beautiful small wooded valley is always a pleasure to walk though and when one is surrounded by a cacophony of high definition birdsong it made the several hundred mile round trip so worth it. Well, I did have other motives for making the trip at that time, but when I had an opportunity to be in that place and at that time I was certainly not going to let it pass by.

The previous evening I had been up on Croft Ambrey watching the sunset. I am fairly certain I saw a redstart up there. It isn't a bird I generally knowingly come across and the fleeting glimpse of its red tail in the evening sunlight has stuck in my mind ever since. One day I ought to invest in a pair of binoculars. I had a great pair in my teens and haven't done any serious birdwatching since then. I'll add it onto my list of things to do.

Ramblin' Man

I had been looking forward to my week in Shropshire for many months. I was particularly eager try and solve a creative problem that has been with me for a while: in what direction should my art and illustration work go?

To me, my creative spirit is a disturbed spirit. It finds no home and is distracted by many things. It wanders over the landscape seeking the touch of inspiration. It reaches out into the natural world to touch, sense and explore everything. Mainly it is an observational spirit, it doesn’t ask many questions but just accepts what it finds and dwells in the presence of being present in places. There is a song by Lemon Jelly called Ramblin’ Man (on Youtube) that I recently came across. It speaks to me in many ways and it isn’t often songs do that to me. It carries with it a sense of wandering, going places and never resting. There is a sense of journey, but never ending, just a continuous walk from place to place. Recently, a long walk found me up on Bury Ditches just north east of Clun. I hadn’t quite planned to walk up there but I was out for a day’s walk and it was a bright, clear day with a hint of spring in the air. As I walked around the ramparts of the hill fort on  top of the hill and overlooked the surrounding valleys and hills, I thought of this song and noted how much I just love to walk. I could walk all day. With no time limitations I could go where I wanted to and just walk and walk. This was all I wanted to do. It was the end of my holiday and this was my last full day away from the busyness of work. Up here, on a hill in my homeland, I felt at peace and at home. But also a place to which I would have to say goodbye until my next visit.

The next day I walked into the greenhouse in the walled garden at Croft Castle and did a little bit of sketching whilst sheltering from a cool breeze. In front of me was a bench with a few small watering cans and some plants growing up and around the iron framework. As I scribbled on my sketchpad I suddenly felt as though a whole wealth of ideas and possibilities suddenly merged. In front of me I had the solution to how I could work on the iPad, do paintings and a develop a new way of working that could cross digital and traditional hand illustration. Things take time to evolve with me. It is like going on a long walk or a journey. Ideas may appear but it may take ages of thinking, trying out ideas or exploring techniques before something of value emerges.

Slow walk, Croft Castle

After a day of walking around Hopton Titterhill and then around the parkland and woods at Croft Castle it was time to slow down a little and do one of my favourite meditative walks. I had sat for a quite a while on the edge of the promontory of Croft Ambrey overlooking the Vale of Wigmore. The air was misty and I could not see much beyond the nearest fields below me, certainly not to the middle distant hills and beyond into Wales. It was pleasantly mild and dry. Walking down off the hill, through the woods and then the parkland was a perfect way to end the day and to slow down and forget the world around me. I found a slow pace that showed no need for hurry or care about what I should do next. Just one slow step at a time. Looking. Observing. Listening, smelling. Sensing. With the distant view obscured by the mist I have to look close around me. To the trees, the fungi, the ferns, the colours, the brambles. As I have mentioned in other posts I just love looking closely at the natural world. Not always understanding it from a scientific point of view, but admiring it for its colours, shapes, forms, patterns etc.

High up on one of the conifers a crow caws. A deep loud crackly caw that echoes through the mist and the trees. I can barely see it, high up on an uppermost branch, a back shape amongst the blackness of the trees. It seems small and yet it's call is so loud, piercing the diminishing evening light and the misty space over the acres of newly felled trees. In the surrounding trees of the woodland edges that are still standing I can here the evening chattering of blackbirds, the occasional wren and the inevitable high picked cheeps of what are probably gold crests or tits. I think there should be a new word for these unseen small birds that inhabit woodland like this. I never quite know what they are but they are just small cheepy things.

I always enjoy this walk because it speaks to me of returning to civilisation after a venture into the wilderness. A sense of homecoming after a time away. A sense of saying goodbye to nature and saying hello to my normal world again. I never tire of this place and hope that I will be back many times in the future. It isn't MY land as such as I claim no ownership to it whatsoever, but it is a special place to me psychologically and spiritually. With thanks to the National Trust I am able to enjoy this place with freedom and find a sense of ownership and attachment to it though the inspiration I find here.

Autumn leaves

Autumn colours of hornbeams (I think) in the parkland at Croft Castle.

Croft Castle Tea Rooms

A very heavy rain shower forced me to take shelter in the tea room at Croft Castle (National Trust, Herefordshire). It was fairly empty before the lunchtime rush and I liked all the different colours of the bottles and things in the drinks cabinet.

"Look at Me".

The National Trust property, Croft Castle, is one of my favourite places to visit. Today found me sheltering in the cafe from a heavy rain shower and being inspired to draw the colourful drinks cabinet. The place was empty mid-morning, but at lunchtime it was packed out with visitors and I had to join a long queue to buy a BLT sandwich (which was worth the wait). I sat in the walled garden for a while and sketched the apple trees and then climbed up though Fishpool Valley up through the woods and onto the top of Croft Ambrey. The conifers have started to be felled here and a forestry machine was making short work of felling, cleaning and slicing the long tall trunks into shorter sections. The earlier mist of the morning had completely dissipated and there were magnificent views all over the Welsh borderland. As I walked back down to the castle the sunlight was spectacular. It was now late afternoon and the light was taking a golden turn beneath a clear sky. As the trees are well into turning colour, the scenery around me was spectacular. There was hardly any breeze and, with the sun low in the sky all colours, shapes and changes of light seemed to be accentuated to give a breathtaking beauty to everything.

If ever there could be a day in which Nature (God?) was saying "Look at Me" then today must be one of those days. It was day that brought a sea of mist, dramatic clouds and showers and a golden evening's sun. It showed me lots of wildlife from woodpeckers to deer. It showed me numerous different trees from the apple trees in the walled garden to the colourful hornbeams that I sketched. It showed me a landscape of hills and valleys. This was a reminder that we live on a planet where by the forces of nature will always continue to do their own thing. Mankind will, seemingly, never cease to evolve into a species that alienates itself from the natural world and seeks a selfish "I can do whatever I want" attitude with disregard for one another, other cultures and civilisations. We seem intent on destabilising communities and countries by greed, fundamentalism and selfish ideologies with no regard for a bigger Earthen picture or philosophy.

Hopton Titterhill and Croft Castle

I have been up to my favourite part of world this past weekend. Saturday was spent around Hopton Titterhill in South Shropshire. I had a very enjoyable walk from the main cark round the hill and down the eastern side to the restored castle keep at Hopton Castle where I sheltered from a heavy rain shower. I then continued past the church and along the road towards black hill, up towards Obley then back to the car. It wasn't too cold and the sun was almost warm when it was out, but at one stage I did have to shelter in an old barn from a torrential downpour and almost gale force winds. A day of contrasts. Wildlife notes: as I drove up through the village in the early hours of the morning I came across a hedgehog wandering around; found a dead goldcrest which actually looked so small and almost cute (not idea why it had died); and came across a couple of the largest wood ants nests I have seen for many years - one must have been almost 4-5 ft high - very rarely have I seen any in this part of the Welsh border.

Sunday was a gorgeous sunny day for the most part and again it wasn't that cold. The above picture was drawn in the walled garden at Croft Castle (NT): weeping willow, snowdrops, hellebore and honesty. 

Flowers at Croft Castle

The herbaceous borders at Croft Castle in Herefordshire looked superb a couple of days ago and there was so much there that I could have drawn. These flowers took my attention though and I took a few photos of some other plants that I might use for drawing practice later. My sketching on an iPad usually draws attention and people are usually quite intrigued by this way of working.

Croft Castle Walled Garden

I began this sketch with high hopes but after an hour and a half I got cold and bored and this isn't a finished illustration. The garden is possibly my favourite and it looked superb a couple of days ago. The apple trees were laden with fruit and the herbaceous borders were full of colour, shape and form. It looked wonderful. I tidied up a few lines when I got home but may try and work something in a proper pen and ink drawing from some photos I took.

Croft Castle, Herefordshire

This is the walled garden at the National Trust property Croft Castle (4 May 2013). This has to be one of my favourite gardens and overlooking it is this lovely cottage. One day we hope to go and stay there when we have a few spare pennies as it is available as a holiday cottage.

I painted this is the same way as the previous picture of Southstone Rock. I just painted over a photograph picking up the colours from a photo and layering up the image. In some ways I feel this is a totally pointless way of working as all I am doing is basically copying a photo. It was though quite a therapeutic thing to do - like doing some cross-stitch perhaps. I don't have to think about anything creative, but just follow the pattern of the colours of the photo. That isn't quite true as I only allowed myself one main brush as I had to work out how to translate the photo into brush strokes. I kept me quiet for 6 hours or so.