Hubby digging

Posted on September 2, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Etruria Artists, Friends, Garden, Life, Meeting people, Nervous, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Portuguese cafe, Sketching, Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent, Urban sketchingLeave a comment

Fork in hand, pulling up weeds, tweed overcoat on, wearing a deerstalker hat, and enjoying a showery morning at Shelton allotments. No sketching challenge today, but we later met with some friends at a social distance so I got my sketch pad out again while enjoying a pleasant coffee in a Portuguese cafe. My nerves were a bit jangly after two seperate meetings with people so I wore a mask on both occasions and gloves when I was weeding. It’s hard to think the world might be going back to normal even though covid 19 is still here.

On an allotment

Posted on September 2, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Allotment, Art group, Blogging, composting, Digging, Etruria Artists, Gardening, Helping out, Shelton, Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent, WeedingLeave a comment

Our art group met this morning to help weed an allotment for a local community group that has taken over a couple of them. There was lots to pull out, but also some beautiful ornamental poppies which we tried to leave in. I was pulling out couch grass, dandelions, euphorbia, dock plants and other weeds. I do think allotments are a good way to get fresh air and exercise when you want to also produce some food for yourself. My hubby was so kern he started asking about getting an allotment to grow fruit trees. We shall see.

Painting, nebula on a star…

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Eleanora street, Life, Nebula, Painting, Space, Spode, Staffordshire, Stars, Stoke-on-TrentLeave a comment

Picture from the studio at spode last year. I thought it would be fun to paint a nebula onto a star shaped canvas I found. I’ve never seen another one. I also painted the Earth on a hexagonal canvas, but again I’ve not been able to find more. The shops seem to have less options to what they had even a year ago. I would really like to get hold of a circular canvas.

Friends making a bench….

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Chairs, DIY, Gardening, Life, making, Photo, Plants, Recycling, Screws, Wood2 Comments

Two old chairs and some planks of wood. Upcycling I think it’s called? Or is it recycling…. The chairs are solid so this should work. I think she’s going to make it into a garden seat with a space in the centre for a plant pot or planter. The good thing about this is that it is recycled, so instead of hundreds of pounds this could be made from scrap out of a skip and some screws to hold it together.

Life gets everywhere

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Dandelion, Earth, Environment, Growth, Life, Photo, Plant, Random, Spode, Time2 Comments

Even iin the cracks of windowledges or steps. This was growing at Spode last year. Not pretty, but green, seed heads developing, waiting to be dandelion clocks.

Next year there might be ten new plants, then a hundred the year after. Not exponential, but a creaping greening. A creating of new life, roots diving deep, breaking up the earth. If only we could embrace nature more? Not kill it but give it a helping hand. We know its wrong to harm the planet. Why do we persist.

Time for a bear poem?

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Bear, Cloud bear, Clouds, Humour, Leaves, Photo, Poem, Poetry, Silly, SkyLeave a comment

I see a cloud bear

Up in the sky

Wearing a belt

And flying so high.

Little black nose

And shiny blue eyes

High in the air

What a surprise

It just appeared

out of the blue

Crazy big ears

Listening to you.

Huchera Square

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, copper leaves, Design, Fun, Huchera, Layout app, Pattern, Photos, Plant4 Comments

I played with this photo as the Huchera leaves look like copper sheets. The little sprigs of green in the centre look like tiny green people. I would really like a macro lens so I could take some very close shots of animals including insects, and also plants, together with things like lichen. Whatever I do, I find I want to do more. I deliberately take off centre pictures to make interesting compositions. I like trying to make patterns out of trees and clouds too…..

Pigeon take off…..

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Ariel, Environment, Etruria, Flight, Nature, Photo, Pigeon, Roof, Sky, Stoke-on-Trent, Take offLeave a comment

As I pressed the shutter on my phone this pigeon was sitting sweetly on the TV Ariel, but it took a short while for the shutter to click, so it was in mid flight by the time I had snapped it. At least I caught the downward beat of its wings. Tail splayed to give it lift. Where it fluttered from its erch I don’t know. I was just checking my phone screen to see what I’d managed to capture. Photo taken at Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent, today. Mostly blue skies and not too cold.

Band of sketchers first drawing

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in SketchingTagged Back garden, Back yard, Band of sketchers, Distance, Drawing, Fun, Life, Plants, Sketching, Stoke-on-Trent2 Comments

A ggrou of us have decided to keep running sketching challenges but not in our local urban sketching group. This is because not everyone sticks to the urban sketchers rules and we were also clogging up the gallery with some strange and interesting images, but not necessarily outside.

Today’s challenge was distance. I saw some people have drawn landscapes with far away landmarks, but I interpreted it differently….. I in my case I drew my friends back yard. With plants growing up the wall and in pots at the rear of her house. First of a new set of ideas….

Owl

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Animal rescue, Digital art, Digital drawing, Drawing, Environment, Life, Nature, Owl, Sketch, Sketchfu8 Comments

Clearing up my photos on my phone I decided to delete and optimise them. It jumbled up the ones I left behind. I loved drawing this on the sketchfu website that has since closed so don’t go looking for it.

I love owls, we have visited owl sanctuaries and animal sanctuaries. I just love the patterns on their feathers, and the fact that most of them fly silently. Their eyes are amazing. Staring at you like they are pinning you to the ground like a small rodent!

Mallaband-Brown

Author: artbychristinemallabandbrown