New paintings and regular art updates.
One of my photos that I got in a local calendar for this year. There was a photographic competition in the summer. People were asked to submit pictures of our local village of Penkhull for it to raise funds for the village hall.
In the end three of my pictures were chosen, that’s a quarter of the twelve monthly images! There was also a thirteenth one that was chosen for the front of the calendar. I’m so proud to have had my work included for 2025.
Making up faces, good practice if you don’t have anyone to draw. You can work out eye shapes and sizes, how would a long or short nose look? Big or small mouth thin or thick lips? Are the ears visible? How long or wide is the face, what shaped chin.
Drawing is a skill, practice does help. 10,000 hours is meant to make you an expert. Millimeters can change things, hair, makeup, colour, looking in different directions. Up down, sideways, three quarter view.
Please keep working, practicing, enjoy it.
My grandfather carved this ship from wood, probably in the early 20th century. It had no masts so I put the the bamboo sticks into it when I was young and I was going to try and put sails on it. It has thin strips of cardboard nailed on along the sides. I painted it up because it was so shabby.
This was a watercolour sketch I’d done about 4 years ago and I’m mourning the fact that I could still draw and paint neatly.
My friend sent me this photo (I don’t have an attribution for it). This was a few year’s ago when it was open and the Leopard Hotel was running ghost tours and serving lovely food.
Then one of the owners died and it was taken over by a family member. I don’t know what happened but I think Covid didn’t help. In the end it closed and the owner moved elsewhere. Although the frontage looked OK it needed a tremendous amount of money spending on it as it was partly derelict in the back upper floors.
The hotel stood empty for months, it was bought by an entrepreneur who may have been going to turn it into flats. Unfortunately someone got in and apparently set up a cannabis farm in it (what I heard). Then it simply burnt down. Some of the frontage may remain but the place is boarded up.
I was involved for a while because I painted the murals in the back room, the Arnold Bennett Suite. I never got decent photos in there. I do hope it can be restored.
Things have got in the way and I have hit a block with my painting of a teapot. I mean both physically and mentally.
You can see some of what is obstructing it. I need to move things, it’s just that I am mentally stuck. I think its the low light levels as this seems to get me every year. One day soon I hope have this finished.
Playing with collage and filters.
It started out as a photo taken through my bedroom window, as I shake I got interesting trails of light. Then by putting the photo through the same filter 3 times I got this laminated effect.
I like the simple colours, black, white and blue. I think the pattern I created looks like a butterfly. I also think it looks a bit like an xray..
I need to draw again, but with my Parkinsons it’s so hit and miss. I need to be still enough to stop the tremors transfering onto the pages. Either my drawing hand shakes or the hand holding the Sketchbook shakes, it’s like being a human seismograph! If I had the gumption I would use it to my artistic advantage. I’ve never wanted so much to colour outside the lines but in a coherent, not random way. My life needs to settle down so my mind can too.
In the 1980’s My hubby worked for a few years in a cadmium colour factory, they processed the raw pigments to get colours from pale yellow, through orange to red and deep matoon red. He bought me jars and jars (empty coffee jars) of the colours home, but as they are made of a heavy metal I decided to give them to a friend who knew how to use them and grind her own oil paint.
I don’t know if he was allowed to bring them but I think he knew I would love the colours and I did. They were the purest colours I had ever seen. To quote Rudolphs song “you could almost say they glowed”. As Cadmium is similar to Lead though, I decided not to use them.
It’s a bit of a dark photo because it’s so grey at the moment, but this is a twisted wire cat my friend Steph made recently. I treated myself to it as an early Christmas present. I need to have a clear out so I can display it properly. I’m thinking it needs to go on a windowledge. Got to ponder these things. Happy Boxing Day folks X
From about 5 years ago, a mural I painted in a friends downstairs cloakroom. I remember it took me several days and I was driving home quite a distance each evening. I wish I could still do this sort of thing. I’d previously done murals for my friends in their old house. They included the words life, love, laugh in their living room, Mr incredible, batman, superman and spiderman in their sons bedroom and a Laura Ashley floral pattern blown up and painted in pale green on their bathroom wall. I’m glad the geese turned up on my Facebook memories, it reminded me of all the lovely things I painted for my friends.
Mallaband-Brown