New paintings and regular art updates.
I drew the horizon a few days ago walking over this bridge but I decided to show it from the side too. This is on the opposite side of the canal from the Industrial Museum at Etruria. Facing away from Hanley in Stoke on Trent. Taken on a sunny but breezy day. The ducks were out enjoying the sunshine. This coming weekend it will be having a steaming weekend. I will try and find out the details.
My hubby was brought up on farms and remembers the byres and barns of Yorkshire and Lancashire. His childhood was spent between going to school and working on farms in the summer holidays. When he was old enough he would even drive tractors. His father was a farm labourer and went from farm to farm following the seasonal work. Sometimes hubby fed cattle, other times he helped plough or harvest crops. They even raised day old chick’s in the attic of their house.
It sounds like a hard life, but an interesting one. He did this drawing of a tractor a few years ago. There are ducks, lambs and yes that’s meant to be a cow. X
A double reflection, strangely the bottom photo if flipped but the geese look the right way up?
I think this is two parents and a large family of goslings.
The grey light and the minium ripples give the reflections a better clarity. The water looks like quicksilver, it has a metallic sheen. This is a gentle, slow and harmonious image. Peaceful and almost monochromatic. The birds silhouettes could be cut outs. Like the set of three flying ducks people used to have on their walls. Usually with one duck hanging down for comic effect.
Feed the birds.
£2 a box
There’s a song there somewhere? One of our things we do when we walked round Westport lake. The birds were all round us, pecking our toes. Trying to get the food out of my hand. Even in this weather they want feeding. Ducks, Geese, Goslings, Coots and Moorhens and a solitary Swan.
The birds still have babies, a bit bigger than yesterday, they haven’t all flown the nest yet. It was lovely to see them.
Fed the geese and ducks on our walk, I noticed this duck looking left and right for the bird food pellets I was giving them.
Reflection of two ducks, turned through 90°. Somehow it became an otter or a beaver? Eyes, nose, mouth, pale fur. Maybe even some ears? Above it I can see some sort of dark eyed creature. Two large eyes and a pale button nose? Arms stretching out to either side of the picture. Ready to pounce on the otter head?
So many questions, imagination can be surprising, finding odd creatures in pattern, Pareidolia….
There was ice on Westport lakes and ducks were standing round on it while the geese and swans swam in the open water. The light was glancing across the surface as it headed down towards sunset. There was scattered cloud that gave the scene light and shade. All in all very picturesque for a short cold walk round the lakes.
We took grain and fed a lot of the birds, we were mobbed by them all clamouring for something to eat. A lot of other people had the same idea. Hubby and I were wearing masks, but we saw very few others wearing them, and there were groups of up to about ten people!
I enjoyed the walk, not really very far, but slippy underfoot. Pleased with my camera phone photos too.
Pattern with ducks.
I just liked this. Not only the ducks, but the pattern they make. Dancing ducks, a star of ducks, funny duckies.
Swimming upside down, floating in mid air. Life gets interesting when you play with photos.
Goodnight.
What better on a crisp winters day than to take photos of a Swan and a couple of ducks. Interesting how the sky is reflected in the first one and not so much in the second. They were taken last year out at a place called the plume of feathers, at Barlaston, Staffordshire. The pub sits alongside the Trent and Mersey canal. Much more picturesque than where it runs through the city, the canal offers an opportunity to glide along in narrow boats on self catering holidays. The boats are beautiful to look at, but they can be quite expensive to rent for a week, so I prefer to walk for free by the water and allow the Swans and Ducks to do the gliding….
it’s not often that you walk down the road in your local town and see a duck and a drake walking down the road in front of us. Crossing by a taxi rank. There is a river called the Trent that runs through the town, but it is in a culvert until it comes out near our local football ground.
When people say hello to each other in Stoke they say “hello duck” where in other places it might be “hello chick, or hello dearie”.
So we hope the ducks found the river or flew off to a park. I didn’t know who to contact and neither of them were injured. Just taking a walk….
Mallaband-Brown