To all my friends, I’ve decided to donate to a charity this year, so sending out love and seasons greetings on social media. X Christine
Merry Christmas
Category: Sketching
Band drawing
Finally drawn (no pun intended) back to #bandofsketchers. Here’s some ‘stuff’ I need to sort out. I must try and do more sketches
Doodle and texture
I’ve found my favourite tweak in Photodirector after losing it for a bit. There were added tools and some of them have been relabled so it took me a while of looking through things to find the texture tools somewhere I wasn’t expecting. The original drawing on the left was done in Artrage oils app 7 years ago.
Again
Comes to something when you are so tired after “another sleepless night”, that you end up doodling about it. At almost 6am.
I used my Artrage app to do it and the various brushes to get different looks. I didn’t blur anything together so it looks quite graphic/illustrative. I’m please the blue stands out against the flood filled black.
Why am I awake? Aches, tremors, too hot or cold, also hungry as I missed a few meals with a stomach bug. Urgh.
Quick portrait
A friend said he would sit for a quick portrait as long as he would not be.identifiable! I did a painting in bright blocks of colour. It’s a small acrylic on board
At the end of the session he took it home. It’s called Harly-Quin.
Sunset
While I was at the group art exhibition yesterday I did some painting. One of them was this small oblong painting of an apple tree at sunset. This is a little work in progress. I’m trying not to muddy the colours. The sky needed to be light and fresh. More to do? More leaves, maybe a little better blending of the blues. Acrylic on canvas.
How do I feel?
How to describe how I feel at the moment? Cold, boggy, marshy. With a dollop of cat trying to cheer me up. Trying to keep my thirst topped up as a drizzle of germs escape my pores.
The cold is in my house, November is wet and drear now, the snow melting into puddles, possibly around my feet. A muddy, gritty, sloppy mess. My central heating works downstairs, but I can’t sleep in heat so the radiators remain off upstairs. The cats are clothed in fur so are OK. My clothes are warm enough with a brown dressingown to top it off. I need scrooge’s nightcap and a candle to make it perfect.
Hands increasingly wrinkled, my ribs a sheet of ice that crackles under the skin. Stretch too much and it pulls on the margin of the cartilage. I’m feeling my age, and slowly seeing it emerge from my mess of greying hair.
I don’t normally like to be too descriptive, but today I’ve just tried to give it a go.
Side
Bit of a sad side eye, Just a digital doodle on my Artrage app. For a #bandofsketchers prompt “side”, the face just evolved.
War Horse
I’ve just watched the film Warhorse, directed by Steven Speilberg. It’s the story of a part thoroughbred foal that is bought by a farmer who’s rivalry with his landlord causes him to buy the young horse for more than he can afford.
The farmers son trains the horse to pull a plough and work around the farm. But his father sells it to help save the farm.
The horse, Joey, is transported to France where it becomes part of the British Army and fights in the first world war. In the meantime the farmers son Albie joins up and goes to France to search for his friend. The story has a series of incidents where awful things happen to the boy and Joey. Will they find each other? I won’t say!
The story was originally on in the theatre, the horse and other animals were puppets, the main horse was supported and moved by two men and was made of a lattice work of plastic? strips that gave the impression of a horse.
It’s an excellent story and both theatre production and film brought tears to my eyes.
Art
What was your favorite subject in school?
I’ve loved art since I was a child. In fact, at school I would finish paintings ahead of everyone else in my class. One day I painted the wooden bit of my pencils to match the coloured part of them. I actually got in trouble for doing that. But I was bored. I got sent to see the headmaster (I was about 7),but ran into the cloakroom and hid. I was fetched back to class in tears and very upset. So much so my class thought I’d been smacked for painting the pencils! I was too upset to tell them what had really happened. I still loved art though!
Mallaband-Brown 