Like many - probably most - people in the Ottawa area, I will be so, so, so happy to see an end to the month of February. It was one of the coldest, most awful Februaries I remember, and it has made life miserable for a lot of people. To celebrate the fact that this horrible month is ending in 2 days, I got together with some colleagues of mine at work today and we made a poster to allow everyone to say goodbye to February.
My co-worker Heather and I drew nasty old man February on a couple of big pieces of paper and hung it on a wall in the hallway where lots of people could see it. Then other people wrote their comments to say goodbye. This is my colleague Aakelah giving her thoughts on what a yucky month it was.
Heather drew a really ugly face and I coloured his eyes and we had a lot of fun. Heather wrote down that the average daily temperature in February was -16.3 degrees C in Ottawa.
It was a hit with people in our office. They all felt better after venting their feelings about how awful the month had been. I drew the word February with icicles hanging off the letters. Somebody wrote "Die, February, Die!" underneath.
So - Goodbye February 2015, and good riddance. Hope we never see such a horrible month like this, ever again!
It was startling to see this magnificent creature outside the window of my apartment in the city. My apartment is right downtown - I mean, you can't get more downtown than it is, a few steps away from the Byward Market and the National Art Gallery and the Houses of Parliament. It is very common to see hawks at my place in the country, but not here in the city. Definitely a first - and very exciting! So I took a picture and then looked up hawks to see what kind it is. I think it might be a Sharp-Shinned Hawk, or maybe a Broad-shouldered Hawk, or maybe...I am really not sure. Any ideas?
It has been so cold for most of January, that I have sought things to cheer myself up and make this cold and dark month more endurable. One day, when I was walking through the Byward Market in Ottawa, I saw this cute little snowman that someone had built in a courtyard. He was so cheerful, he brightened my day.
Another way I overcome the dreary cold is by buying myself a bright bouquet of flowers. Love the yellows and reds. Ahhh! It makes me think of spring, when flowers will be growing in the gardens again.
Most winter evenings recently have been just too cold to go out for a walk. So I cheer myself up by sitting down with a bunch of coloured pencils and scribbling a drawing. Nothing serious - just for fun, just to put down a bunch of bright colours on a piece of paper. Another way to dream of spring, another way of coping with winter.
When walking around the city recently, I have been finding wonderful light displays that have been installed to celebrate the season. Like this configuration of decorated trees in a little courtyard. They looked like strange creatures from outer space, or under the sea, waving their arms and dancing.
In another courtyard a few streets over, I found another set of trees decorated with lights. But this time, they were red and green instead of blue. These ones looked like tall thin creatures stretching their arms.
The light effects I have seen in the country have been quite different. They were not man-made but rather caused by beautiful sunsets and the lovely evening light on the new fallen snow. Truly gorgeous!
We had a full moon this past week. I took this photo of the moon when I was in the city, at dusk just as it was becoming visible. It somehow seemed appropriate that it would be framed by the very industrial-looking structure of the bridge - the moon in an urban setting.
In contrast, when I took a photo of the full moon from the back yard of my home in the country a day later, it was framed by trees and a long silver jet trail. Very appropriate to the country setting.
When the cold weather comes, I find I spend a lot of time indoors. That's when I realize how important windows are, for expanding my view and seeing the world outside. This is one of the windows in my apartment in the city, and I really liked the pattern of the shadows on the glass.
I realize I have been taking a lot of pictures of windows lately, and of the views through windows. This is a skylight in my house in the country, showing the top of a maple tree outside. It is such a pleasure to look up through this window and see the immense blue sky above.
Sometimes I take pictures of the sunrise through a window, as I did one morning at my apartment in the city. It was such a beautiful start to the day.
And sometimes I take pictures of the sunset through a window. This was taken from a window in the building where I work. I was looking westward over the city of Gatineau towards a bridge crossing the Ottawa River in the distance.
And sometimes I take pictures when I am outside, looking in. I took this picture when I was walking around the Byward Market, passing by a coffee shop. I was impressed by the fact that all the people inside were staring at their laptop screens. Oh well - I guess that was another kind of window for them. So I was looking through a window at people looking through windows! Cool!
This past Sunday, I went to the Jack Bush retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. I loved the show, primarily because the paintings were so bright and colourful. My favourite paintings were called the "Sash" paintings, which he did in the mid-1960s. When I went home, I decided to try some drawings in the style of these Sash paintings.
This is my first effort. I discovered that it is not easy to imitate a Jack Bush Sash painting. His colours and shapes and lines worked so well together. But I had fun trying.
This is my second attempt. I was imitating one of my favourite of his paintings, called "Tight Sash". Again, I found it really difficult to replicate what he had done with his work - the almost perfect composition of colour and shape.
Here is a photo of Bush's "Tight Sash", from a National Gallery brochure. Isn't it amazing? I really liked Bush's work when I looked at the paintings, but I have even more respect for it now that I have tried doing the same sort of thing myself. Anyway, it is a good show - highly recommended.
