Watershed 2

There are a few days in the Norwegian calendar, in Spring, which are looked forward to by Norwegians in Oslo at least, and, like my last post, as a little like another watershed.

The days feel as if they are another marker of time, of seasons change, of new beginnings, a baptism if you will.

And in a sense there is a baptism, a baptism of the streets as the streets are literally washed clean and clear of all the grit that has been laid down over the last 6 months.

Unlike in England where rock salt is used (and then what?), in Norway the streets gather so much grit over this period that you can be floating on an inch of the stuff as the snow and ice melts away. Paths are blurred into the grass as new tracks are made, ruts form on the roads as cars, busses and lorries groove their way.

It's serious business; woe betide any resident who happens to violate the mandate to not park in the vicinity of their house or apartment at the appointed time, hefty fines are applied.

Grit?
Be gone!

Today a number of large Tonka truck like vehicles are worming their way around the streets near me. This is nothing like the road sweepers that tickle the curb-sides on that little island out to the west. This is heavy duty road sweeping and washing, like quarry vehicles to a child's matchbox toy. Huge flat bed containers are cast into the middle of road junctions to receive their collections, tractors with washer attachments and massive water tanks move up and down, washing the mud, grit, detritus of winter. The world here, like Spring, is reborn.

Watershed

It's rare these days, that I feel inspired to write something for my blog, but today, or more precisely, yesterday, I had that moment.

Because it rained.

Oh, big deal? Maybe to people back in the motherland (England) where it rains throughout the year, but here in Norway it's been something like five or six months since it rained. Yes, since November!
It's curious the feelings the rain has evoked. Laying in bed this morning it was of hiking, hearing the wind and the rain in the trees, the sound of power, nature, elements. The returning grey rather than pretty whiteness, reminding me of walking to school on wet September mornings. The cool, reaching fingertips prompting me to rushing to bring the washing in out of their reach.

From the cold numbness of stable weather systems, constantly producing less than zero degree weather, allowing kids to play outside but remaining pretty dry through winter, today they are scurrying off to school with their rain jackets and pants on, parents hurriedly herding behind them. The trees carry the birdsong from the tops, as if a jungle has suddenly become rampant. The rain washes snow away, leaving contrails of ice and compacted snow where people have made their paths, ochre grass weakly bordering the waving banners and waking up. The strange, new, rancid smell of earth, hidden for so long, builds and is rinsed clean again. A svartetrøst sings. A blackbird, reminding me of England, like the rain, it feels home.

Life Changing Trips and Not Showering

Tomorrow marks the start of a potentially life changing trip, involving not showering for up to 2 weeks! The trip will be chemically induced though, mileage next to nothing and the showering just being banned until I have some stitches out.

Being diagnosed with a neurotic left foot of the Morton's variety was a bit of a relief, representing light at the end of a tunnel that has gone on for over a year now. The pain has ranged from mild to severely debilitating, waking me in my sleep, being unable to walk properly at all at times (at times being, sometimes for several hours through the day, not a once a week type of thing), and has given me some appreciation for the struggles and frustration less able people may experience.

So tomorrow I will have a small op, the nerve to the insides of two toes being removed, and the calcareous cover the nerve has created to protect itself being 'pinged' out (that's a technical term, used by the very nice doctor). My toes will be numb but with an 80% chance of success I am hopeful that this will be a new lease of life, enabling me to start to engage with my environment more, rather than being stuck on the periphery, watching. I will be able to go hiking with Thomas again, to explore Oslo more, to meet friends for coffee, and be able to attend interviews without being distracted by horrendous pain.The prospect of being pain free is giving me renewed confidence and feelings of positivity generally; amazing the effect something like this has.

I don't know if I'll write up a trip report; the effects may continue for a few months to come as the foot starts to return to normal size and I can once again get normal footwear on, or maybe having to redefine what is the new normal for me. It may involve Crocs! But whatever, I shall be glad and thankful to move on. It feels as if life is starting for me in Norway, all over again.

Sunday Afternoon Sykkel and Sketch

In an effort to mitigate the painful foot, and for my recent birthday, Thomas bought me a bike!
This means that we've been out for short cycle rides in the locality, a new sense of freedom and of reach a bit farther than I've been able to recently. Last weekend we had a nice picnic in Ekeberg park, Thomas making an omelette on the Trangia, and this weekend we went out for a cycle around Østensjøvannet (east Ensjø lake), about 10km which is enough for me right now after all the set backs with my foot this year.

A nice ride, past the new bird hide / lookout on the edge of the lake, a walk up the hill past a heap of snow (sorry folks, the snow is just from the local ice rink!), brakes fully applied down the hill, weaving in and around people of all ages and abilities (ATV/mobility scooters in abundance) and around the eastern side to watch the ducks and geese before flopping down and drinking coffee via Thomas and a gram cracker...

It was great fun and another opportunity to get the sketch pad out and see what might happen. There was a nice line of birch trees with a dark area behind them, sun shining off the leaves closest to me and, with the sun being still relatively high, shadows under the trees themselves.

I did a bit of rough pencil work to start with but got impatient with that pretty quickly and instead started putting some watercolour down, cadmium yellow with some ultramarine to give a pale green band for the fresh grass, then different tones of the same in bands with a broader swipe of mostly ultramarine for sky, trying to keep the paper damp. Normally that wouldn't be a problem here in Oslo given the amount of rain we have, but today, wonderfully, we had brilliant, warm sunshine which means everything dries a lot faster and you (can) end up with backruns galore!

Trying to avoid this I started painting in darker foliage, turning the watercolour pad upside down which helped to free my mind from what it thought was there. It was good to let go and something I'll definitely try again in the early stages.

Unfortunately, control set in again and more and more indistinct watercolour ended up being put down until I looked properly at the scene again and got my watercolour pencils out, along with the Derwent Graphitint. This helped a lot, being more familiar now with how I can use each and having more control. I wanted to emphasise the bands of tone in the landscape in front, with the white of the birch trunks linking each layer.

I'm posting this as a record of any development in the future and for me to learn. I'm not especially happy with the end result, although I enjoyed how organic it felt to develop from watercolour washes to then use of pencil and how a pastel type effect can about, utilising the tooth of the paper. Trying to reframe what I had produced, shown in the first image, I tried different ways of cropping, looking at a more square format of the three trees on the left, and an alternate view of slicing a landscape through in the third image, because I liked the horizontal layers that had emerged and felt this could emphasise this.

In the last image I had thought about the pastel effect and wanted to see if I could reproduce what had developed in my minds eye. Not quite, but it was the first time I'd used pastels for many years, maybe 25 or 30, so I wasn't too disheartened.
I've just started to read Betty Edwards's "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" and am wondering how my drawing might change or develop - and hopefully improve!