New paintings and regular art updates.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was pets. This is one of our black and white cats, his eyes are very dark gold so when he’s in shadow they are hard to see. He’s the biggest of our rescue cats, he used to be the outside cat but has migrated in and now lives happily with our other two.
Propped on my easle next to my latest painting, a lovely card from my friend in the USA. I felt a wave of joy and guilt! Joy to be connected with such a lovely person. Guilt because all my intentions to send cards were knocked for six by this chest infection. I had to rely on sending emails and Facebook. I only sent cards to a few close relatives. I even have cards in my handbag I was going to deliver on Christmas eve but didn’t get out on the freezing cold.
Thank you to Martha for this card and letter. You really made me smile today. Thinking of you and Bear and Teddy. Hope you get some good snow!
Vision changes with age. If you have shortsightedness it can sometimes get better because your eyeballs can shrink with age, that means the image hitting the retina at the back of the eye comes back into better focus. On the other hand the lens in your eye can start to stiffen and the muscles around it don’t pull on it as well as when you are younger. So the lens does not focus as it used to. This is called presbyopia and tends to affect people over forty (if I remember). Hence vision can change with time. Worth getting an eye test?
I lie down and I start to cough, I sit up and it stops, it’s so tiring having this chest infection. It’s a nuisance. I’m feeling a bit better now, but the more it lingers the more it feels like I will never get over it. I fall asleep on my chair in the day, too tired to go out and do anything. I can manage cooking as long as I sit down after I’ve prepared things and let the food simmer. Last night I read a book I’ve almost finished till four am, then I lay down and started to cough. My legs and feet ache. I can’t get comfortable. I also managed to drag my CPAP machine off its shelf as I turned over in bed. It clattered to the floor, still pumping air. I hate it, but it keeps me breathing at night. It’s almost eight am now and I’m sipping a decaff coffee trying to keep my fluid levels up. I’ll probably try and sleep again later but give up by midday. My sleep pattern is awful and no doubt tonight I will sleep more heavily. I can feel my eyes aching in their sockets! Sleep please come.
A glow in the sky
Memory of an evening walk
Across grassy fields
And over stony stiles
Only a few days
By the sea
But I remember
The hues and colours
The sights and river sounds
Blousy hedgerows
Full of blossoms
Fruits and seedheads
Mild and breezy
Candyfloss clouds
Cornwall, County of coastlines
Beautiful beaches
High cliffs and moors
I want to return.
#bandofsketchers prompt today is Integrity. To me that is also part of my identity. I had fun trying to recreate fingerprints (not mine) after watching the royal institution Christmas lectures about crime scene investigation. Having Integrity is also somehow about honesty.
There’s something called the Drake equation that hypothesises whether there is other intelligent life out in the universe. I don’t know it and can’t quote it, but I looked it up (see above). The fact that the scientists have even found amino acids in space (the building blocks of life) means that there are possibilities of finding other beings.
The equation looks at how many possible inhabitable planets are out there, whether life could evolve, and whether intelligent life might come about. Then you have to think about time. If an intelligent life form was to exist somewhere else they might send out signals, but it could take millions or billions of years to travel across space before we detected it, and by then they could be long gone. So it would only be possible to communicate if they were closer, tens of years away? But then a conversation with someone even twenty light years away (the distance of a possible habitable planet) would be very boring. One question every forty years, one reply eafter another forty years. And space travel would only be possible at a small percentage of the speed of light, according to the laws of physics. So we might be able to talk but not visit.
It might be great to get a signal, but even if there are other civilisations it doesn’t mean we will ever find out.
I guess this is like a diary entry. I’ve already put had this bug for probably more than two weeks. I think I caught it in a meeting that I went to, there were a lot of people I didn’t know there and at least one was coughing. I’ve tested negative again for covid, so I think I’ve caught something that must be doing the rounds. Lots of other people I know have it too. I feel I might be responsible! Symptoms include a sore throat, a cough which has really gone on my chest, and feeling shivery.
It’s only when I feel like this that I wonder how tiny viruses and bacteria can have such an affect on animals and humans. There must be a lot of them, and as your body tries to fight back does it release toxins? Bacteria and viruses try and get inside your cells and replicate, and your body tries to kill and expel them, but I don’t understand all the physiology. I just wish I was a cat and could sleep through feeling ill!
An alien ocean trapped in glass, blue light floods through. My glass paperweight collection sits out of the sun on a window ledge upstairs. As they are spherical thru could act as lenses and magnify the sun’s rays. So I’m careful, I don’t want a fire! I was trying to get a picture of a red glow, but the sunrise was unspectacular this morning. Still I think this turned out nicely.
#bandofsketchers prompt for Christmas day was Joy. I decided to sketch a sort of nativity scene. I wasn’t totally happy with it so added texture using the photodirector app on my phone. Merry Christmas x
Mallaband-Brown