In Like A Lion Out Like A Lamb

“In like a lion, out like a lamb” has always seemed a straightforward enough proverb: when March starts, it’s still winter, and by the end of the month spring has begun. True, in many climates the weather hasn’t quite reached the lamb stage by the end of the month—it’s more like a surly cat, maybe, or one of those awful territorial honking geese. But we get the idea. I have seen the phrase referred to as an “eighteenth-century saying” in more than one unreliable Internet source, while Wikipedia calls it “an old Pennsylvania” saw. - Almanac

There are, of course, some Christian aspects to the phrase.  Lamb of Jesus and Lion of Judah, and that when Spring comes in like a lamb, in March, it often returns to Lion as a false spring happens and weather turns wintry again.  



I read a funny thing about weather and March.  It said that Winter is like a mad woman.  She slams the door and is all bright and sunny Spring, and then, like an angry woman she opens the door and says, "And another thing!"
We have had a few days of spring and today it is supposed to snow/rain.  It has been a long winter and the signs are here that Spring is coming soon. 
I have worked in my art journal, ahead, and March is a mishmash of March things.
 

This is a two-page sketch and then darkening with a charcoal wand.

I began with the lamb, 


I did some pink under painting on the lamb, then used a spoon back to daub on thick gesso. I used the back of a plastic spoon to daub on the gesso.

Moving over to the Lion,


For under painting on the lion, I used yellow ochre.

A touch of and definition , a tree with limbs on each side, and I think it is done.  

I think we all know this phrase, and so often it is so, that March comes in one way and leaves the other.  All I know is I am ready for Spring.

©Carol Desjarlais 3.2.20