Galaxy

Light pollution is destroying our view of the night sky. In cities and towns only a few stars are visible at night, but if you get out away from them the sky can be full of thousands of faint stars including our Galaxy, the Milky Way. Our Galaxy is one of Billions or Trillions in the known Universe. It might look a bit like this if we were outside it, but as we are about a third of the way into a spiral arm of the Milky Way, it’s impossible to see that. Plus we are surrounded by dust lanes that obscure the view. Our galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its centre, and is made up not only of normal matter but dark matter and dark energy as well according to Astronomers and Astrophysical scientists.

The image is a digital drawing I did several years ago. You can only see something like this through a telescope though.

Close encounters

I’m just watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I love this film and remember being in a massive queue around the block when I was waiting to see it at the cinema. That was when it first came out in the 1970s?

It’s a Steven Spielberg film staring Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary a man who sees unidentified flying objects and is compelled to find the cause of it. He keeps building objects in an attempt to understand where he needs to go. I won’t go into more detail in case you have never seen it.

I love it because it has a real feel good factor to it, it’s mysterious and intruiging and leads you through the story with a really satisfying end to it.

I have seen it a few times over the last few decades, but I never get bored with it. The special effects were ground breaking at the time. I hope if you enjoy it if you get to see it.

White rabbit

I couldn’t resist, I’ve never had my photo taken as a white rabbit before. My hubby had his taken as the mad hatter. This was at the New Vic theatre yesterday. The only problem was that I had to really crouch down as the cut out faces were really placed to be the right height for children. I was impressed by the quality of the painting. Whoever painted the Alice in Wonderland characters has a real talent, full of energy and funny.

Sold a painting

I sold this today, only for a few pounds, but it was my first for 2023. I’m not making a great deal of money out of my art, but I know that this will be going to a good home. I didn’t get a photo of it fully completed because my phone camera is playing up but it’s a pretty good representation of the final piece. I didn’t really think about it but it also made me feel calm when I looked at it.

Boarded up

An old ruin made of pinkish grey stone. The window has a white windowledge stained with green algae caused by the wet atmosphere in the area. The window is boarded with some sort of chipboard. The lower section is sodden with damp from successive rainstorms. It must be screwed into the window frame because it is sunken into the window surround, not flush with it. A bracket of metal, almost the shape of the number ‘2’ is on one side of the window, and a thin line of stonework shaped almost like an eyebrow sits in the stone course above the boarded window. This is on the first floor of the building so it would not be easily accessible from the ground. The light on the building is grey, reflecting what the sky would look like if it was visible in the photo.

I was trying to write this in a simple descriptive way. It’s harder than I thought to be accurate!

Stepping out

Only a few steps today, but more than I have been doing. I will try and keep this up now. If I can do around five thousand a day, or at least regularly, then it’s got to be better for me. Only problem is that my foot is hurting today, my shoe is rubbing on the outer side of my foot and I don’t know if it’s a temporary thing or if I’ve hurt myself. We will see tomorrow.

Countour lines

Draw multiple curved lines, add shading. Voilà! You can almost make a three dimensional image. I think this looks like folds in cloth. It’s an interesting optical illusion. The shading makes it look more rounded. It’s the first one of these I’ve done for a while. I used to draw things like this digitally on my computer, but this was drawn with metallic and matt felt pens.. I think it’s quite a good abstract image.