New paintings and regular art updates.
I thought so! If you fold a British bank note you can make the Queen either frown or smile by folding a line through each eye and down the nose…. You can do the same with Grumpy Trump! I just couldn’t resist experimenting by doing a quick sketch of the mugshot of the politician and then folding the paper. If you tip it up it smiles, tip it down it frowns more….
I just answered a friends question about whether I have specific mugs to drink from depending on how I feel.
This is what I wrote: I have a ‘trust me I’m an artist’ mug, a ‘mug full of funny’ one which was bought from a charity, and a cat one with multiple cat cartoons. It has a crack in the top of the handle, so it wobbles slightly when I lift it, but it stays together and I love it. The ‘mug full of funny’ one is very bulbous so I can warm my hands on it. The artist one is wide and round so I can glug down coffee, and the cat one comforts me because I’ve had it for years and it is full of memories!
The featured photo is an image of a mug I decorated a few years ago.
How would you design the city of the future?
Enough space to live, to fit in, to get what you need. But not too much, so you crowd everyone else out.
I like the ideas in Japan where space is at a premium so it is designed to be suitable for peoples needs. Things like fold up beds, or rooms that convert from one use to another. Innovation and recycling of materials.
There is a TV programme called George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, where every week someone is trying to get the most home space out of a tiny space. Some of the solutions are incredible.
Look at the Earth and our cities, we are too wasteful. We want too many things, we want the biggest car or house, without realising less is more. Each of us could accept slightly less and share out assets better!
So town planners need to consider the resources we have, the cost of living, how things can fit together to make things better (or worse). Just having a little garden space can be very fulfilling. Life doesn’t have to be awful in cities, but it does need to be less haphazard and more organised, otherwise things tend to the chaotic and entropy builds. Cities fall as well as rise. We need serious thought and planning.
One of my favourite flowers in the hanging baskets. Begonia flowers seem to come in big and small sizes. I think I heard that they have male and female flowers. But I might be wrong? They are quite fleshy and thick petaled, some of them are doubles like this one (double the normal number of petals). They look amazing BUT they are crammed with petals and that makes it harder, or even impossible, for bees and pollenating insects to collect nectar from their flowers. It also means that they are unlikely to be fertilised so I’m not sure if you can grow them from seed? This is all speculation on my part. I think I need to hear from a real gardener! I may not even have the correct identification of the plant!
I managed to step down a four inch step at the backdoor with hubbys help. Took photos of the hanging baskets before autumn starts to chill them…
Just feeling a bit of sunshine on my face was lovely. As I was helped inside again I spotted the pale grey moth with dark markings was resting, wings out on the back door, bonus! Outside at last, even if it was only a few minutes. X
Where did your name come from?
If I had a name like Archer or Baker I could assume my name had come down from the work my family used to do. Archer could be a soldier or hunter, Baker a cook or a bread maker.
But where does Mallaband or Brown come from? One is a strange name the other ubiquitous. Mallaband was a name that got me bullied at school. If I had a ‘normal’ name I think I would have been overlooked.
When I was little I thought Mallaband could be broken down into Mal la band. I thought it might mean ‘the bad band’. I decided we must have been part of a group of French bandits! What an odd thought.
Later I heard we might have a Yorkshire connections. But this was only a suggestion and there was no indication where it came from. I could join a genealogy website. But I don’t know if it would be something I would be interested in.
Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was flowers. I did a flower sketch using symmetry tools in the Sketchbook app, and I just used a couple of paintbrush tools (salty watercolour and an ink brush). I varied the number of petals on each flower and tried to create something impressionistic.
Shade of blue
Above me and you
Fading into black
When the sun sets.
Stars and planets
Meteors and comets
Fly up in the blue
Through different hues
Cerulean, Cobalt too,
ultra marine all in view.
A limited palette
Restricted to blue.
What motivates you?
I think I’ve always cared about people. My mom used to say I had a soft heart. I like films that you would class as weepies, ones that bought a tear to your eyes. I’d sit on the sofa with my mom and have a good cry.
So I’m motivated to try and support people. I wonder if that is just a perpetuation of a female role model ? It certainly was pushed when we had our careers guidance. It was suggested I went into nursing, I which didn’t set well. Why not a doctor? Anyway by then my motivation had changed. I wanted to be an artist, and for forty years I’ve pursued that role. Not to be famous. Not to make money, but to create art (and care about people).
Although I was not able to attend the Open day at a spode this weekend, I arranged to have one of my paintings Autumn Spring exhibited alongside other people’s artwork. I think it looks quite good. I was experimenting with an abstract idea in 2019 just before Covid arrived. The idea is a mixture of oblong and squares on the Autumn side, all jumbled and crammed together and is opposed to Spring which is more lyrical and fluid. Representing overwhelming waste and damage, and what we are doing to the Earth, and the renewal and regrowth that the Spring could bring.
Mallaband-Brown