Monday 20 February 2012

Softly rendered perfection of mysterious origin

Vivien Blackburn


Vivien sent me these exquisitely-defined feathers collected by her students on a nature walk.  As there was no sign of the previous owner, they had to guess what birds might have lost them – poor things will be missing that lovely downy warmth, whoever they are!  

In fact Vivien was quite sure an owl and a quail were involved, but I went ahead and did some speculation of my own after noticing this disgruntled cat (I wish I could draw cats as easily and expressively as Vivien!) on the stamp on the back of the card…. I know cats don’t have feathers, but I believe this one suspects Vivien has hi-jacked his colour scheme for that lovely big feather in the middle. This is not a working cat BTW, Vivien’s postcard was carefully enclosed in an envelope, with a regular British stamp, so the Queen did the heavy work in getting this tiny perfect masterpiece all the way from England to Victoria in a record four days!

6 comments:

Making A Mark said...

What lovely feathers! The background colour sets them off beautifully

Pat said...

These are wonderful feathers. I can feel their softness. Very well done! Great observation!

Alison Staite said...

Great to see Vivien using different mediums from card to card, as suits the particular subject. This is lovely. I agree with Pat, Vivien's caught the softness wonderfully.

Papierflieger said...

Still life seems to become popular on our postcards and I like it. :).

Africantapestry and Myfrenchkitchen said...

Oh, I remember your feathers with the Flying pictures project...and these are an addition to the file of beautiful feathers you draw...such soft touch ...I swear they move when I breather her in front of the screen!
Ronelle

Robyn Sinclair said...

Every time I stop to pick up a feather, I think of you, Vivien they've become your signature along with those lovely Cornish seascapes. Your passion for the subject is so evident in this beautiful card.