Capturing the world with Photography, Painting and Drawing

Digital art work

The Kings River, Kells, Kilkenny – In infrared …

Lumix GX80
17mm Olympus f1.8 lens
Urth R72 filter
F8 at 25 seconds exposure


The places I remember, all my life ……

Down by the canal
Altrincham, Greater Manchester, UK
Digital art work

I spent the early years of my life growing up in Altrincham in the greater Manchester area of northwest England. It was in these years, between the 1970’s and the late 1980’s that marked the end of the industrial age for the town.

This period left much of our local area with factories that became redundant and closed, some locations included empty land where factories once stood, a lot of these locations existed beside the Bridgewater canal.

I am currently working on a visual art project that is calling on my memories of these locations, working both digitally and with charcoal on paper, creating some compositions that reflect on this period of my life, places from my childhood. I am in my 50’s so this is not easy at times but I feel its a great exercise in visual storytelling…


The Crow, a winter time art project …..

The crows
A winters art project 2020/2021
Nigel Borrington

The Crows

A winter time art project, Digital painting created using a Wacom art tablet and taken from a photographic study of our local landscape and the Crows that have made it their winter home.

I feel today’s painting is a big step closer to the final paintings I am hoping to create, I like this composition much more than my last painting and I feel that I am now starting to represent the crows and the movement they create in our winter fields much better….


Winter Art Project 2020/21, Crows in a winter Landscape …..

Winter Art Project 2020
Crows in a Winter sky
Digital art
Nigel Borrington


Digital art work with a poem ( This Landscape Before Me By Sarah Holland-Batt)

The Landscape before me
A digital drawing
Using Krita and a Wacom Tablet
Nigel Borrington 2020

This Landscape Before Me
By : Sarah Holland-Batt

First the factory stood, quiet as an asylum.
Then the annihilating mallee with its red fists of blossoms
and the mountain ash creeping over it like a stain.

I have no proof, but I tell you
there were leadlight windows here once, barred.
They cast a little striped light on the women.

Now in scrub and yellow broom I stand on a history
braided and unbraided by stiff Irish wrists.
The rope and span and carded wool are unpicked
as are their faces and names.

Londonderry, Cork, Galway, Kildare—
as I say the words they are sucked away
to a hemisphere in darkness.

I will not presume to say
what suffering is or how it was meted out in this place.
At what point it breaks a body I cannot tell.

But this morning I saw a young rabbit
hunched in brush and shadow.
I saw its lesioned face, its legs too thin to scramble,
the blood-berry red and pink scab of its eye.

It had caught the disease
we brought here for it
and wanted a quiet place to die.

And it was lucky, or as lucky as it would get—
there was time and light, the hawks and dogs
had not been written yet, and were still out of sigh


February evening at Beach : Duncannon Beach, Co.Wexford, Ireland

Duncannon Beach, County Wexord, Digital painting,
Nigel Borrington 2020

February evening at Duncannon Beach

The light by the last wave lingers on fronds
of seaweed fingering wave-wet rocks where
brim-filled pools overflow before they
empty when the water surges then sucks,
surges, then sucks.

glistening, sun warmed, lit by the last
light of day while slow footsteps meander
with the gentle waves rhythms, rising, falling,
so calming in my ears, that crest falling
with an almost silent swish, hearbeat’s grace.

All troubles tumbled away calmed first,
washed by light where the last wave lingers.


Images of Winter – In the storm

Digital Drawing
winter hedgerow
Nigel Borrington December 2018

Digital Drawing
Tone Brushes, MyPaint with Wacom Pro M Tablet
Winter Hedgerow
Nigel Borrington December 2018

With Storm Dennis on its way to Ireland this weekend, Winter is still very much here, oh well time for me to stay inside and draw 🙂 🙂 or paint.

I am working on some still life work, a drawing of a sheep’s skull ……


Berlin from the river Spree

Berlin
from the river spree nigel borrington 2019

Selecting images for an drawing and painting portfolio

Over the next few weeks any images I post on my blog will relate to a selection process I am making for producing some art work. I want to go through my blog photos posted since 2011 and select images that could related to both pencil/ink and Charcoal drawings along with images the will make good subjects for Painting in Acrylic/oil paints. I also have many images that I never posted here, as when I get my camera into the landscape I try to almost exhaust the location as much as possible by taking many images.

With this image of Berlin from the river Spree, I felt it would make a great subject for Charcoal, Pencil and Pen and ink work.

This is a process I have wanted to do for sometime, as it will help me get focused on the art work I want to produce during 2019…..


Digital Drawing – Winter in the Hedgerow, December 2018.

Digital Drawing
Tone Brushes, MyPaint with Wacom Pro M Tablet
Winter Hedgerow
Nigel Borrington December 2018


Monday 1 hour drawing – The Fisherman , Ink on paper sketch ……

One hour sketch
Fisher man on the rocks
Ink on paper
county Galway
Nigel Borrington 2018


Drawing from the Irish Bogs …….

Drawing from the Boglands
Digital Drawings
Nigel Borrington 2018

Back in June this year Ireland was in the middle of a 8 weeks drought and even the Boglands had become dry. At one of our nearest Bogs we had a large wild fire which I visited to get the below images. Since then I have been working on some drawings of this event. This is a great subject for ink on paper type drawing.

The above image is just one that I have completed so far …..

Bog fire Gallery

After the Wild fire
littleton bog, tipperary Nigel Borringtpon


Drawings from the Hedgerow …..

Art of the hedgerow
Digital Drawings
Nigel Borrington 2018


Drawings from the Hedgerow ……

Art of the hedgerow
County Kilkenny
Digital Drawings
Nigel Borrington 2018


The Secrets of a Tree, Growing up to the Sky …….

The trees that Climb into the Sky
Landscape Art
Nigel Borrington

The Secrets of a Tree

Because they are primeval, because they outlive us, because they are fixed, trees seem to emanate a sense of permanence. And though rooted in earth, they seem to touch the sky. For these reasons it is natural to feel we might learn wisdom from them, to haunt about them with the idea that if we could only read their silent riddle rightly we should learn some secret vital to our own lives; or even, more specifically, some secret vital to our real, our lasting and spiritual existence. (Kim Taplin)


A Country Boy in Winter , A poem by : Sarah Orne Jewett

snowly mountain 2

A Country Boy in Winter

By Sarah Orne Jewett

The wind may blow the snow about,
For all I care, says Jack,
And I don’t mind how cold it grows,
For then the ice won’t crack.
Old folks may shiver all day long,
But I shall never freeze;
What cares a jolly boy like me
For winter days like these?

Far down the long snow-covered hills
It is such fun to coast,
So clear the road! the fastest sled
There is in school I boast.
The paint is pretty well worn off,
But then I take the lead;
A dandy sled’s a loiterer,
And I go in for speed.

When I go home at supper-time,
Ki! but my cheeks are red!
They burn and sting like anything;
I’m cross until I’m fed.
You ought to see the biscuit go,
I am so hungry then;
And old Aunt Polly says that boys
Eat twice as much as men.

There’s always something I can do
To pass the time away;
The dark comes quick in winter-time—
A short and stormy day
And when I give my mind to it,
It’s just as father says,
I almost do a man’s work now,
And help him many ways.

I shall be glad when I grow up
And get all through with school,
I’ll show them by-and-by that I
Was not meant for a fool.
I’ll take the crops off this old farm,
I’ll do the best I can.
A jolly boy like me won’t be
A dolt when he’s a man.

I like to hear the old horse neigh
Just as I come in sight,
The oxen poke me with their horns
To get their hay at night.
Somehow the creatures seem like friends,
And like to see me come.
Some fellows talk about New York,
But I shall stay at home.


Landscape drawing, Boolabrien lower, nier valley, county Waterford.

The view of boolabrien lower nier valley ireland nigel borrington

The view of
boolabrien lower
nier valley
ireland
nigel borrington

The Nire valley in county waterford offers some of the most amazing landscape views in the south east of Ireland, I used a Wacom MobileStudio Pro tablet to draw this sketch of one of my favorite positions, sitting on an old stone seat that looks across at the farm fields as they slowly make their way up into the hills above.


Digital Art work – A December Sunset – Callan, county Kilkenny

Kilkenny Sunset  December 2016 Nigel Borrington

Kilkenny Sunset
December 2016
Nigel Borrington

A December Sunset – Callan, county Kilkenny

Often when out for an evening walk at this time of year the sunsets across our local fields can be just amazing to view, the sun is low in the sky all day long in December when compared to a mid summers day. With out getting to detailed this changes the angle of the sun and it seems to make the last few moments of day light last longer. This along with the mist and early frosts that can sit of the fields, haging above the hedgerows is just great to see 🙂

This painting is created using a PC application called mypaint, I have spent the last few weeks doing my best to get up to speed with how to make the best use of it, at first just using some of the drawing tools and ink pens but as you can see – I hope that I am now getting more use to the painting and colour tools..

The paint is posted the moment I feel its finished , I very much like the idea of this as it helps me to close the processes involved and to stop me coming back and over working anything. Its a little hard to describe but its a great feeling to start and finish a painting in one session and then be able to learn when you feel that you have finished !!!