Images of Kilkenny, Thomastown train station
Nikon CoolPix A
ThomasTown train station and the Kilkenny to Thomastown rail line, part of the Waterford and Kilkenny Railway, opened on 12 May 1848; it was subsequently extended from Thomastown to Jerpoint Hill, opening on 29 May 1850. These days there are only three or four trains stopping here each day with a direct links to Waterford City and Dublin Heuston stations.
I captured this image on a walk around the ThomasTown area last weekend, the signal box in the picture is located on the far side from the now only public used platform, their is only a single rail line passing through the station these days. There was only a single car parted in the larg car park on this Sunday afternoon with the two of us being the only Humans to be found, the atmosphere here felt ghostly and isolated, with great weather for a series of moody black and white images.
I took many black and white images and I am working on the rest during this week, I will post an image Gallery before next weekend. This image was taken using My much loved Nikon Coolpix A , These cameras have become very hard to find, I had to wait many years before finding one in good condition at a very good price, finding one for sale in Dublin. The images it can produces are high quality and its a perfect walk around camera for location studies.
The image Is processed using Raw Image Processor RawTherapee , this is a Linux version of the application that I have been using for sometime now, I find its one of the best programs for my Black and White image processing Style.
Monday morning on the river bank …..
River Barrow
County Kikenny
Ireland
The river has a silver string that runs its length,
holds it to a source in the mountains.
The river cradles its corded muscles of water
between high banks, giving the banks no thought
as it bites them with eddies,
eroding their lower flanks.
River thinks it is only water and the gristle
of currents, hay stacking surfaces
and deep, bellowing falls
running for the sea, though
it does not know it is there.
River should take more care of its banks.
Banks are what hold it a river, give
direction, keep it mitering downward.
Without banks, river loses its way,
becomes a swamp and stills.
All my life I have chafed at river banks,
fighting to spread my currents
in whatever turn needed exploring.
The high song of freedom seemed
to be a music of ‘no banks’,
and yet the whole joy of rivers is pushing,
etching the banks to join the flow,
but having them hold.
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….
Woodland Song …..
A Woodland Song
Nigel Borrington 2020
I sense suspense and peacefulness
where light and shadows loll,
it’s there my mindful heedlessness
now frees my soul to stroll.
A forest path empowers strength
that worldly cares conceal —
then demonstrates, beyond arm’s length,
a living scene surreal.
The way the arms of trees reach out
to all that share its space;
the way they wave their leaves about
and breathe wood scents I trace.
The little birds slip ‘tween the leaves
of understories, green —
where tiny fruits and bloomers tease
with scents that go unseen.
A red-tailed hawk, perched high in pine,
alerts with high-pitched call,
while restless ravens realign
in rowdy free-for-all!
There’s more that linger here unheard
that know I’m passing through;
their many eyes watch undeterred
‘til I am out of view —
I feel their spirit walk with me
and feel a sense I’m blessed;
all offer sense of reverie
and nature at her best.
If solitude shares strength renewed
and natural for free,
I’m sure to find that interlude
promotes reality.
There is no question of just when
I’ll go again to find,
that perfect place that pulls me in
so, I can lose my mind —
The woodland song, like silent friend,
knows all I can’t resist,
and there’s no need to comprehend
its soulful kiss, when missed!
2020 Joy A Burki-Watson
I dream of you, to wake, by : Christina Rossetti
Dreams of the morning light
Irish Landscapes
Country Kilkenny
Nigel Borrington 2020
I dream of you, to wake’ by Christina Rossetti
I dream of you, to wake: would that I might
Dream of you and not wake but slumber on;
Nor find with dreams the dear companion gone,
As, Summer ended, Summer birds take flight.
In happy dreams I hold you full in night.
I blush again who waking look so wan;
Brighter than sunniest day that ever shone,
In happy dreams your smile makes day of night.
Thus only in a dream we are at one,
Thus only in a dream we give and take
The faith that maketh rich who take or give;
If thus to sleep is sweeter than to wake,
To die were surely sweeter than to live,
Though there be nothing new beneath the sun.
August mornings – Black and white landscape images
August Mornings
Kilkenny, Ireland
Nikon D700
Nigel Borrington
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 ……
Hans Op de Beeck – Staging Silence
I feel in the need for some inspiration having taken a break from blogging over the last month or two in order to help with some big projects, Now I find myself a little removed from any creative ideas…
So over the next couple of weeks I am going to take a closer look at the work of some of my most loved artists.
Hans Op de Beeck (1969, Turnhout) is a Belgian visual artist who lives and works in Brussels. For over twenty years he has exhibiting internationally.
I first viewed his work at the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny back in 2014 and was instantly taken by his film making, I love his view of the world and the way he reflects on the passage of time in his videos.
Here is just one such a film : Staging Silence
‘Staging Silence’ is based around abstract, archetypal settings that lingered in the memory of the artist as the common denominator of the many similar public places he has experienced. The video images themselves are both ridiculous and serious, just like the eclectic mix of pictures in our minds. The decision to film in black and white heightens this ambiguity: the amateurish quality of the video invokes the legacy of slapstick, as well as the insidious suspense and latent derailmentof film noir. The title refers to the staging of such dormant decors where, in the absence of people, the spectator can project himself as the lone protagonist.
Memory images are disproportionate mixtures of concrete information and fantasies, and in this film they materialise before the spectator’s eyes through anonymous tinkering and improvising hands. Arms appear and disappear at random, manipulating banal objects, scale representations and artificial lighting into alienating yet recognizable locations. These places are no more or less than animated decors for possible stories, evocative visual propositions to the spectator. The film is accompanied by a score which, inspired by the images themselves, has been composed and performed by composer-musician Serge Lacroix.
Kilkenny landscape art – Charcoal and Pastels on Paper – Winter trees
Kilkenny landscape art,
Winter Trees,
Charcoal and Pastels on Paper
Kilkenny landscape art – Charcoal and Pastels on Paper – Winter trees
This is my second large scale drawing this week, worked on an A2 sheet of cartridge paper with the drawing itself being formatted to fit inside an A3 mounting card and frame.
I am really enjoying working with charcoal and pastels again, I feel that I could and most likely would be able to get more detail into each drawing if I used a set of pencils, high details for each landscape view however is not that much of a worry for me at the moment. The drawings I am working on at the moment are aimed at being Proprietary Artwork for later paintings.
I am learning all the time now about the possibilities of working with what is the very basic mediums of black charcoal and Pastel, the skills of blending and smoothing the charcoal on the paper, back into areas of grey. Drawing with both these mediums is very interesting, detail is possible but needs care to produce, each stage of the drawing needs fixing on the paper so that it is not smudged.
As with any drawing or painting when finished there are areas I like and areas I do not, here I loved working of the misty sky and the trees but found the foreground of the wet muddy field a challenge. I am happy overall and feel I have managed to work in lots of texture and levels of details hidden in the mud in the foreground and very happy with the blended sky.
I am not in all honesty yet looking for finished work as I want to keep learning as much as possible so the more I learn the better and the more that makes me have to look and think about a finished work the better. I am not finishing anything that I would not show to anyone so that is at least very pleasing.
This is the same drawing cropped down, I wonder if its better without the foreground area or better with it ?
If anyone wants to make a comment here – it would only help me 🙂 🙂
Kilkenny landscape art – Charcoal and Pastels on Paper
KIlkenny Landscape art
Charcoal and Pastels on Cartridge paper
Format 297 × 420 mm
Nigel Borrington 2019
Monday Drawing
Kilkenny landscape – A Charcoal and Pastels on Paper
This week I plan to continued building up my painting and drawing skills, I will continue selected from my landscape photographs and selecting ones that I wfeel will make good Mono drawings and paintings.
This evening I have just finished the above Charcoal and Pastel landscape, its drawn on A2 paper but framed for A3 dimensions. This is a good size from drawing as I feel I can work freely with this size, letting the charcoal move openly. It lets me stand up above by drawing board and move the Charcoal and Pastels with fully movement of my arms.
Just like with my last post I plan next to work the same landscape view in Acrylic paints working with cool grey tones to capture the feeling of a cold grey day, just like the day that I captured the original black and white image on.
Art Project – Kilkenny winter landscape – Photo,Drawing and Acrylic painting.
January Forst
County Kilkenny
Irish Landscape Photography
Nigel Borrington 2019
Kilkenny winters Landscape project Jan 2019
This is the complete set of images including the original photograph, then the Charcoal and Pencil drawing and Acrylic painting on canvas, from the set of county Kilkenny landscape in winter photos captured last week and that I have spent most of this week working on.
This is only the first set of images and I have a lot more work to do yet to produce final drawings and painting of both this single photo and then the full set of other images I want to use. I am happy with the results so far as this is the first none digital art work that I have worked on for a while.
The main thing at the moment is that I am enjoying the process very much, its taken a while to get my art desk setup again and to get all the materials in place but now this is done I can just get working and start having some fun getting creative.
county kilkenny landscape art
The view from Ballycuddihy
Charcoal and Graphite on paper
nigel borrington 2019
This drawing uses Charcoal and Graphite pencils on paper to produce what I hope is a moody image of a winters morning over the local Kilkenny landscape.
County Kilkenny in Winter
Acrylic on Canvas
Nigel Borrington 2019
This Painting was produced using greys mixed from Acrylic (Cerulean blue, Crimson, Yellow Ocha and titanuim white)to produces grades of Greys, some cool and some warmer.
I hope that this helps to set a feeling of winter in my local Kilkenny landscape, on what was a very cold and frosty morning in mid January 2019.
County Kilkenny Art – The view from Ballycuddihy – charcoal and graphite drawing
County Kilkenny landscape art The view from Ballycuddihy
Charcoal and Graphite on paper
nigel borrington 2019
The view from Ballycuddihy – charcoal and graphite on paper
In my last post I uploaded some photos taken in the hills at Ballycuddihy county Kilkenny, I want to use these images and others as the source for a series of both drawings and acrylic paintings.
So over the weekend I started with a charcoal and graphite drawing. I like very much using these two drawing materials as I like to strip an image down into its monochrome tonal values before returning to repeating the painting in acrylic or oil paint and bring in colour paints. I plan this time however to paint these landscape views using acrylic paint, using black and white only, keeping the finished work to a maximum of ten grey scale values.
Here I have used the charcoal in both willow stick and compressed block form to produce a series of tonal values, using a brush to soften the charcoal into different grey values and tonal grades.The fine details in the drawing are created using graphite.
I am happy with the finished results considering that the drawing was completed within four hours, I have learnt many things here and will repeat this technique many time so that I keep getting to know much more about using charcoal and pencil together.
January frost – A black and white gallery
January Frost
County Kilkenny
Irish Landscape Photography
Nigel Borrington 2019
This Morning we had our first frost of the year 2019 and the view from the hillside of county kilkenny was amazing.
Here are three black and white images, I used black and white because I felt it captured the frosty landscape perfectly ….
A Frosty January Morning, Gallery
2019 – A new light , sunrise over Kilkenny’s fields …….
Starting my 2019 Blogging …..
I always like to start my blogging for a new year by changing my site heading image.
This year my first image taken and posted – my new site header image was taken on Sunday Morning at first light, I was on an early morning walk and the weather was cold with a full covering of cloud. I had just about completed the 5km walk I had planned to do and had almost given up on capturing any images as the light was just so unexciting when the sun came bursting through an opening in the clouds and located itself just about some trees in the distance.
I have taken a little time off-line over the Christmas and New-Year period just to give myself an old fashioned way to celebrate and recharge my batteries, I spend some great time with family and friends 🙂 and as a result I feel great and am looking forward with new energy to 2019 and the future 🙂 , my blog and my love of photography still play a massive part in these plans 🙂
I also noticed that the number of likes and visited to my Blog (started in 2011) went well over the 350,000 mark while I was away – I would like to say a massive THANK YOU to you all for this, I don’t post here with such figures in mind , I post to share the things I see and capture around me – That said ! Getting this level of interest and support with so many likes has been a massive boost to me and a huge reason to drive me on in keeping sharing my images and a love of both Art and Photography!
THANK YOU SO MUCH !!!!
December by the Kings river : The River and poem by – Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803 – 1882)
The River
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 – 1882
And I behold once more
My old familiar haunts; here the blue river,
The same blue wonder that my infant eye
Admired, sage doubting whence the traveller came,—
Whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he washed
The fragrant flag-roots in my father’s fields,
And where thereafter in the world he went.
Look, here he is, unaltered, save that now
He hath broke his banks and flooded all the vales
With his redundant waves.
Here is the rock where, yet a simple child,
I caught with bended pin my earliest fish,
Much triumphing, —and these the fields
Over whose flowers I chased the butterfly,
A blooming hunter of a fairy fine.
And hark! where overhead the ancient crows
Hold their sour conversation in the sky:—
These are the same, but I am not the same,
But wiser than I was, and wise enough
Not to regret the changes, tho’ they cost
Me many a sigh. Oh, call not Nature dumb;
These trees and stones are audible to me,
These idle flowers, that tremble in the wind,
I understand their faery syllables,
And all their sad significance. The wind,
That rustles down the well-known forest road—
It hath a sound more eloquent than speech.
The stream, the trees, the grass, the sighing wind,
All of them utter sounds of ’monishment
And grave parental love.
They are not of our race, they seem to say,
And yet have knowledge of our moral race,
And somewhat of majestic sympathy,
Something of pity for the puny clay,
That holds and boasts the immeasurable mind.
I feel as I were welcome to these trees
After long months of weary wandering,
Acknowledged by their hospitable boughs;
They know me as their son, for side by side,
They were coeval with my ancestors,
Adorned with them my country’s primitive times,
And soon may give my dust their funeral shade.
October on the forest floor : fallen leaves
October on the Forest floor
Fallen Leaves
Nigel Borrington 2018
Today was a typical Autumn day here in country Kilkenny, we have had some mixed weather over the last few days, some sun , some rain. Today was mild but wet, so all the falling leaves were full of rain drops something I just had to capture 🙂
These Autumn evenings , Image and Poem by (John) Robinson Jeffers, (1887-1962),
Irish Landscape Images
Autumn eveings County Kilkenny
Nigel Borrington
Oct 2018
Autumn Evening
Though the little clouds ran southward still, the quiet autumnal
Cool of the late September evening
Seemed promising rain, rain, the change of the year, the angel
Of the sad forest.
Autumn Evening
Nigel Borrington
A heron flew over with that remote ridiculous cry, “Quawk,” the cry
That seems to make silence more silent. A dozen
Flops of the wing, a drooping glide, at the end of the glide
The cry, and a dozen flops of the wing.
I watched him pass on the autumn-colored sky; beyond him
Jupiter shone for evening star.
The sea’s voice worked into my mood, I thought “No matter
What happens to men . . . the world’s well made though.”
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
Monday Evening Poetry : A Night in the Field, Jay Parini, 1948
Suntsets over Country Kilkenny
Nigel Borrington 2018
A Night in the Field
Jay Parini, 1948
I didn’t mean to stay so late
or lie there in the grass
all summer afternoon and thoughtless
as the kite of sun caught in the tree-limbs
and the crimson field began to burn,
then tilt way.
I hung on
handily as night lit up the sky’s black skull
and star-flakes fell as if forever—
fat white petals of a far-off flower
like manna on the plains.
A ripe moon lifted in the east,
its eye so focused,
knowing what I knew but had forgotten
of the only death I’ll ever really need
to keep me going.
Did I sleep to wake or wake to sleep?
I slipped in seams through many layers,
soil and subsoil, rooting
in the loamy depths of my creation,
where at last I almost felt at home.
But rose at dawn in rosy light,
beginning in the dew-sop long-haired grass,
having been taken, tossed,
having gone down, a blackened tooth
in sugary old gums, that ground
Nigel Borrington 
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