For Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt club. A badly drawn King of Clubs. Too tired to draw much detail. I just used some felt pens again. I used collage app to redo it so both sides are the same x
Club
Author: artbychristinemallabandbrown
I'm an artist based at the Spode factory site in Stoke on Trent. I paint, draw and create digital art. Contact me at mallabandbrown@aol.com
Chess anyone?
Today I played chess for the first time in ten years. My friend has acquired a chess set, so we sat in a shady spot by a cafe and had a few games.
The result was 2 games to her 1 to me. Then I found out she’d been in a chess club at school and had been champion in one year! So I didn’t do too badly. I’m not trained so I made some surprising moves where she could see I should have done a different move. But it was fun.
We had a quick go at drafts but didn’t remember the rules. Anyway we will have another game in a few weeks. I need to find a set to practice. Hubby used to be good at it so we might play a game or two. Good for exercising the brain.
Changes
Why do people change things?
You’re just getting used to a place, and then someone decides to change things around. Like our supermarket. It was recently ‘refurbished’, in other words taken apart like a jigsaw and put back together in a different way. They increased the stock but moved everything round. The problem is I can’t find things. The signage doesn’t correspond with what’s on the shelves! A shop used to take 10 minutes, now?
So I go somewhere else now for the majority of my shopping. Leave things alone! If it isn’t broke don’t try and fix it!
Facebook does it all the time, just when you think you know what you are doing they change it. So you get questions asking if you want more or less posts…. When you just want the same as before.
Today, jetpack has added a ‘me’ option. Plus some sort of acceptance request, it’s changed stuff…. Leave it alone so I know what I’m doing. I’m an artist, I paint blue sky, I don’t paint it green for a change and tell you all future skies will be green! Going from WordPress to Jetpack was annoying. I did it. Don’t mess it up!
Painting
Which activities make you lose track of time?
Art, and particularly painting is where I get “flow”, that is lose track of time when I’m creating art. Sometimes I can go months without painting, but I still create things either by drawing or working on digital art.
From my earliest memories I can remember painting and drawing. It got to the stage where my mom would show relatives my art because she thought they were good. I only had half a bedroom because I shared and that was on the window side, so to display my art I strung strings across the bedroom and hung my pictures from them!
I was obsessed with Elizabethan fashions and used to draw women and men in great dresses and suits of silk, with slashed sleeves and enormous ruffs around their necks. I was also interested in the Asterix the Gaul and would copy the cartoons of him and the other characters. I would spend hours getting the images correct. I think that was when I started getting better at drawing.
I remember spending hours over my art exam paintings. In fact one of my paintings was selected to be put on display at our twin town in Europe.
I think they say you have to do something for 10,000 hours to become an expert. I must have done far more than that. But the time has flown and I don’t recall it being hard work, “time just flies when you are having fun” is a saying that I think is based on what happens when you do an activity and you lose track of time.
In two minds
A simple digital drawing using flood fill to fill in a sketch, then a line drawn over it to delineate the face and duplicated and flipped to create a collaged image. I like the freedom of digital abstraction.
Digital chrysanthemum
Dots can make a picture
Layered on top of pink
Each and every one
Is a little link
To make a whole new flower
Digitally drawn
Made of dots and splodges
A digital flower is born
Global warming
What bothers you and why?
I have lots of problems but the one that worries me the most is global warming. This is essentially the biggest threat to humanity I can think of. We should respect the world and it’s environment.
Carbon dioxide levels are higher now than in the past. It means that global heat is held in by a greenhouse effect. Europe, America and China are suffering extremes of heat and wildfires that can be seen from space continue in Canada and in Sardinia. Children at a holiday camp near Athens in Greece were evacuated because of wild fires nearing their camp.
Friends and relatives are my concern to some extent. I have no way of protecting them or their children. But it’s the rest of the population that are at risk. Water shortages, food shortages, lack of health care, damage to crops, drought, all have an impact. And it’s not just humans. Animals are increasingly endangered as we take over their land to grow crops or fell the trees they live in. We grab land like it’s infinite. We have to work together as societies to reduce emissions.
But even as some governments try to persuade us to be more careful with the planet, others are are being lobbied by Industrial bosses to just carry on with old technology and fuels, they are more interested in profit than saving the planet.
I can remember fears about population explosions and pollution back in the 1970’s. This has been happening insidiously for decades. We have to realise that our responsibility is not just for ourselves but for generations to come if we want them to have a decent future. Perhaps the idea of constant growth needs to end and we should work towards sustainable development goals.
Hot
Sundays #bandofsketchers prompt was hot…I’ve tried to draw a hot landscape, perhaps it could be death valley. The hot colours in the sky at dawn. What will the temperature soar to? The colours were done with glitter pens and a black italic nib pen.
Wild flowers in town
Wild flowers sewn at a local car wash a few years ago are a riot of colours and shapes now. They haven’t been cut back and each year the crop gets more varied and colourful. I hadn’t seen the yellow spikes of flowers until this year. Unusually we have had a lot of rain recently and I think that has encouraged a spurt of growth.
Masquerade – reviewed by Susan Clarke
Susan Clarke, Artistic and Executive Director of B-Arts has very kindly reviewed my story Masquerade. Masquerade A review by Susan Clarke Masquerade by Tim Diggles brings to life the world of the North Staffordshire Potteries over the last 90 years, through the lives of the Bloor family. It’s a pacy narrative set in the years […]
Masquerade – reviewed by Susan Clarke
Mallaband-Brown 