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.
Quick portrait
Category: Sketching
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!
Looking out for him.
I used to like singing “blow the wind southerly” and actually got to sing it in a pantomime a few years ago. We were pretending to be in a singing competition and I tried to sound like Catherine Ferrier?
It’s about a woman waiting for her lover to come back to her from across the sea. It’s very old fashioned but lovely and it’s a contralto piece that suits my rather deep voice. Anyway I did this digital drawing after being inspired by the song. X
What will happen tomorrow?
The world turns,
Cities fight for freedom,
One land or another is overwhelmed.
War, pestilence, natural disasters.
We seem to have all four horsemen
Riding around, a melee of fears?
The question is
What can we do?
Politics and Peace?
Politicians and War?
Who decides,
We do!
Imagine a world of peace
As Lennon sang
Idealistic but needed.
Doodles on my easle
I do have a propensity to draw or paint on anything. So this happened a while ago. I also painted a large ammonite on the dining table that was losing it’s varnish. I painted it and then revarnished it. The ammonite was one we found on a beach near Whitby. The actual fossil is up on top of a bookcase, out of my reach.
Why the eye and the face with the streaming hair? Just a couple of things I’ve doodled over the years.
Prop
#bandofsketchers prompt ‘prop’ from a couple of weeks ago.
Old drawing of Jodrell Bank radio telescope, takes tons of metal to prop the dish up….previously used for a different band of sketchers prompt ‘holiday ‘ but it seemed appropriate. Cheshire, near Holmes Chapel,
Mallaband-Brown 