Category: Fine Art

Painting and drawing

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What do you wish you could do more every day?

I used to paint and draw a lot more than I do now. I feel though that recently I’m quite blocked, stuck, nervous of creating. Yes I sketch every couple of days, but my easle is resolutely empty. The paints in their boxes, the brushes lying fallow. The trouble is my physical health. My left arm keeps shaking and I have pain in my elbow. I’m still waiting for a full diagnosis. I don’t think it’s anxiety, but not painting makes me anxious….

I just saw a painting/art competition online, but the entry needs to have been created after 1st January 2023. The painting I had in mind, and it was a good one, was from a couple of years ago, so it was not suitable. Also the entry date is tomorrow, I’m not going to have time unless I get my paints out NOW and paint all night..

I have a list of paintings to do for friends and family. I feel oppressed by that. I should feel glad. I need to break the block.

One word?

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What is one word that describes you?

How to choose? I have a few in mind, but I guess the main contender is Creative. That’s because of all the art I create and things like this blog. I love experimenting with images and working on them in different ways, I am quite eclectic, I might never have used a technique before, but I will go through different stages and steps to come up with a fresh idea. My mind thinks about all sorts of things all the time so it could also be the word Chaotic, but I have discounted that because I do plan things sometimes. I am not totally disorganised.

Need to take better photos…

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Three pottery paintings I did a few years ago. The one of the jug is going to a new home soon. ❤️

I took them to a joint performance of our Clay chorus and the Starfish choir because we were singing a song about the Willow pattern (this is based on a Spode platter) and also a ship called Hispaniola bringing pottery clay from across the seas that had been written for us by Mark Whitter. I was very proud to have my work appreciated.

I am making cards from these if I can so I need better photos to show them clearly .

Jupiter’s pole

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Probably my most abstract image, actually me trying to paint one of the poles of Jupiter taken by the Juno probe a few years ago. It just popped up in my Facebook memories. I find blending difficult for paintings like this. Acrylic dries to quickly to get a fluffy feel to the clouds. I might revisit this and add a bit more to it.

Mill

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Small ‘Mill’ painting sold.

It was very good to hear that my small painting of Etruria Flint Mill had sold to a friend yesterday. It was another in a new style I am experimenting with. I’m using more lines and textures to emphasise  the patterns in the bricks and sky and trees. The image is based on a photo of the Mill and Industrial Museum, but I added more white to give a feeling of when it was in use, and the site was dusted with the crushed bones and flints that went into Stoke-on-Trents bone China, their attempt to replicate Porcelain. The canal is brown with rusty water. If you visit Kidsgrove which is to the North of Stoke you can see the canal there is often very orange. The Trent and Mersey canal runs through the Harecastle Tunnel which is another interesting part of our industrial heritage.

I have other work for sale at Arts and Minds Gallery at Harper Street in Middleport opposite Middleport Pottery, Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

#motion

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One of the art groups I’m part of put a prompt of #motion on their Facebook page today. I thought of this painting. Acrylic on canvas called Georges from a few years ago. A painting from memory of when I jumped in the sea fully clothed and swam out to a wild dolphin at Challaborough? In Devon. There were people on the beach and people in wetsuits further out. Georges kept swimming past me because I was somewhere in the middle. He’d got lots of scars along his body. I found out from a poster the next day telling people not to swim with him as he was too friendly and had been cut by boat propellers. You can also catch illnesses like pneumonia from breathing the air from their blowhole.

Playing with silhouettes

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A previous digital drawing of a fence against a colourful background. My Sketch app on my phone has silhouettes of trees and plants that I rarely use. I also added extra texture and overlays in Photodirector. These are a couple of the art apps I have on my phone that I use frequently and don’t want to remove if I have to get the Jetpack app. Am I irritated? Yes. Must stop going on about it. Creativity isn’t important after all is it (sulks)…. Sorry!

Whirlpool

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My digital drawing of the whirlpool galaxy. Visible through powerful telescopes, wouldn’t it be amazing if it was visible to the naked eye?

Why is our galaxy, the Milky Way, so faint? Partly because of light pollution which drowns out the hundreds of thousands of stars visible in a dark sky area, and partly because there are dust lanes n the way of the view to the centre of the galaxy. Plus if you live in the Northern Hemisphere your view is out of the galaxy. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere your view is towards the centre of the galaxy, plus the small and large Magellanic clouds.

Baker St Park, with flying dog!

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A cloudy sky (with an odd dog shape- I’m not changing it) flys above a park. The grass is shaded by the long shadows of trees. The sun is bright, but starting to set. I used various techniques taught to us by Jo Watson, an artist who comes out and teaches charcoal workshops.

Most of the group used images supplied by Jo, but a few of us chose our own images. This drawing was based on a photo of Baker Street Park in Penkhull, Stoke-on-Trent.

I really loved learning about charcoal, I’ve used it before, but not been in control of it! ❤️

Mixed up phone photos

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I decided to free up a bit of space on my phone yesterday as I was on over 90% full. I really need to get more memory on my phone as I have over 3,000 images. The trouble is when I optimise and delete photos it resets the date on them so sometimes they all reorder themselves and jump around in my gallery until they settle down. Then I end up with a lot of duplicated photos and I have to go in and delete the duplications, and I also try and edit the others and try and delete more of the ones I don’t like. I hope you don’t have these problems!

The featured image is a painting of frost on canvas where I edited it in a filter to change the colours. It just popped up in my photo gallery.