Following the light

In the past five or six years I got more and more interested in the natural world. I started my journey thanks to Clare Walker Leslie and her beautiful guides to nature journaling and observation. Since then, I kept many nature journals and nature studies, and when we moved here in Finland my interest was especially drawn to how the light (or the lack of it ) impact the natural life, and which are the signs that the outdoors gives us to hint snow, or rain or especially low temperatures. So far I learnt a lot, but so much it is still out there to observe and understand. In the last couple of weeks Finland experienced very low temperatures, friday was the coldest day for us, with -29 here in the south. The amazing side of these freezing days is that usually they are bright and sunny with clear blue sky. So one day I had some fun litterally following the sun during the day, taking pictures every once in a while from the same window. If you wonder why all this excitement about the sun, here some facts: at the solstice, one month ago, the sun was rising at 9:23 and setting at 15:07 ( we had 5 hours and 44 minutes of daylight ), today the sun has risen at 8:49 and the sun will set at 16:10 so 7 hours and 22 minutes of daylight, almost two hours more in less than a month. This has a terrific impact on every living being's life. Birds wake up earlier, and humans wake up easier and feel less tired and in general the energy level increase so much. Life begins anew somehow. But here my four more significant pictures, showing the path of our star.

  Taken at 1:10 pm

 Taken at 1:30 pm

 Taken at 2:51pm

Taken at 3:42 pm

The Creation is amazing, the nature is such a great gift and teacher. If we could only live in armony with it, and with each other, our world would be such a beautiful place to be.

Have a great week !

Nature Journal : Imboloc through my eyes

And so february is here. January has gone in a flurry of projects and ativities. Days are longer, energy is highier, house is much more tidy and things done are more and more lifting my spirit. In this month my youngest doughter will turn 11, she is leaving childhood behind too, but hopefully some of it will stay a little longer for me to enjoy.
This morning I painted an entry in my nature journal. Today for the Celts was the first day of spring or Imboloc. For Christians is Candlemas, actually there is a fun side, I only learned while studying celtic traditions that candlemas is celebrated by Christians. In my family there was just the saying that if today the weather was good it meant the winter was gone but nobody ever mentioned to me that today was the blessing of the candles for the year in honour of the virgin Mary. Another interesting finding of today was about this Scottish rhyme that basically states the opposite of what we used to say in my family : if Candlemas be fair and bright,come winter have another flight ...
But well, here Imboloc has been characterized by snow. A huge amount of it. It's three days that is snowing no-stop and today the snowfall was even heavier. I actually love this. The temperature it's not so low, we're at 0 C , and the world is white and magic. I not even mind the snow job. And the light ! So much of it comparing december, this morning the sunrise was at 8:30 and the sunset at 16:29, so 8 hours and one minute of daylight,five minutes more then yesterday, while the 20 of december the sunrise was at 9:23 and sunset was at 15:06 !!! So little more then 5 hours and 40 minutes. Incredible isn't it ? Our Creator makes wonderful things. But here few pictures ...

Here from my nature journal, this is what I see when I look the horizon from my kitchen window facing south-east. Unfortunately we don't live in the forest, it's just a small road with nice rows of nice wooden houses, but the forest is very close. So when I look outside I try to lift my eyes over the roofs and I focus on the trees and the sky and it feels like if we're in the forest, into the wild ...

This is the actual sight from the window, but I'm so used to my little game, that I hardly notice houses and roofs now ....

And this is how it looks from the north-west window, in my bedroom. Everything is so white out there. It looks like a dream :)

Happy february to all of you !

Nature Journal

Here the last two entries in my nature journal. I don't have the time to update it every day, but I try to paint\draw at least once or twice a week. It is such a lovely and nice habit. Now it's almost one year that I'm more consistently work on nature journaling and mostly on ONE nature journal ( I used to paint here and there always waiting to 'get better' before starting on a real journal ... sometime we can be our worst enemies isn't it ? ) and when I am about to start a new paint I love to flip the pages for a while and read here and there. Read about the nature, about its course, temperatures, rain and snow, darkness and light and the way it looked the world around in a certain moment. And all of this hardly ever going out of the house or away from the garden. As Clare Walker Leslie says in her Keeping a nature journal , nature can be found everywhere, you just need to look out from the window ... or in the vase on your table ;)

 Here the flowers that my husband and children bought for me on my birthday 

This is the big tree ( sorry I'm not good at recognizing the trees, I'm learning ) between our garden and the neighour's one. This monring was chilly, at - 7, but the sky was blue and the sun was shining. The east side of the tree ( trunk, branches ... ) were golden because of the sun, while the west side in the shade was still frozen, with a thin layer of white frost icing it. It was an incredible sight. Now forever in my journal :)

Nature Journal

A new entry in my nature journal. Tonight we had a very heavy snowfall that lasted until this morning with big and fluffy flake gently falling down. While I was having breakfast I felt the urge to draw the beauty of my neighbours' garden. I'm happy i did because now we're in the middle of a wind storm with rain and all the snow it's alrady gone ....

I have added a new page in my blog where I'm going to collect all my watercolors, either from my nature journal and from other illustrations I make. You might like to have a look :)

Nature Journal

Few years ago I found out about nature journaling. I've always had journals, recording my experiences,feelings, prayers, Bible studies so the idea to dive in a new kind of journaling was very exciting for me. I started on 2010, when we were living in Tuscany, to collect wild flowers and plant and draw them or bring my journal with me in the woods or pic-nics. When we  moved here in Finland on 2011, I started  recording for months, beside everyday happenings, also weather, temperature and sunrise and sunset and kept drawing from nature. Then I bought few books from the marvellous Clare Walker Leslie, the two that really opened a new (journaling) world for me have been Keeping a Nature Journal , Drawn to nature through the journals of Clare Walker Leslie . 
Last march I decided it was time to upgrade my nature journaling to a new level, so I started my first 'real' nature journal. In it I record temperature, weather, shortly what it is happening nature-wise and then I sketch something and usually colour it with watercolours ( I really love watercolours ). Now after almost 10 months I can say my way of journaling it's not only about nature, I draw mostly houses or interesting landscapes, few animals and plants, very often the same subject in different seasons or time of the day ( I have drawn the same tree outside my bedroom window in every season now ) and I also like to keep track of the sun in peculiar moment of the year ( solstices and equinoxes ) since here in the north it changes dramatically ( we have 5 hourse of sunlight in late autumn and 20 hourse of sunlight in late spring).
Anyways, what I wanted to share today it's my latest entry, I'm especially proud of it, I really like the way It looks. It's a watercolour of our house as it looked the 30th of december.

Two work in progress pictures

 

The finished work