I don’t

Are you holding a grudge? About?

I don’t hold a grudge, it’s too painful, and it makes no sense. If you hold a grudge who are you harming? Yourself. Painful thoughts about someone else don’t harm them, they don’t know about it, but the worm of a grudge bores inside you and makes poison in your thoughts and harms your moods.

Oh I have held grudges before now, and for a long time, but I have it up as a bad idea. Don’t hold grudges, it’s not worth it.

Ink

Lino cut print. I completed an illustration course last year and I dabbled in printing for a couple of projects.

I was careful not to gouge holes in my fingers doing this, the tools to cut out the lino are extremely sharp. I ordered the kit over the Internet and it came with the tools, an inking tray, a roller, a hand tool to push the ink onto the paper and several cutting tools.

Of course I drew a cat, it’s my default setting. I tried to make it into a tabby cat although the print is black and white.

Green

Green man

Thursdays #bandofsketchers prompt was Green. Forgive me, but I do like drawing weird green men ideas. This has been drawn in the Sketchbook app on my phone. Then I  added textures in photodirector. It’s a bit of a monster! I’d say this is more of an illustration than a pure sketch.

Tired

How are you feeling right now?

I tried to draw a cat yawning, which made me realise how tired I am at the moment.

If I were a cat I’d have yawned and fallen asleep by now. But I’m doing things, I’ve just eaten my evening meal, and I’m going to be doing things till well after midnight.

But cats have more sense. They come in when they are hungry or cold. They curl up on your lap, or in a little quiet place, a cat bed, or a chair, and then they get up and go out when they have rested. I read somewhere that cats sleep for up to 16 hours a day? I get by on barely 5 usually. Sometimes I’ll catch up. But these last few weeks have tired me out. I realise sleeping on the settee doesn’t help, but I still can’t climb stairs. I wish I could trans(mogg)rify into a cat! I’d get all the rest I need.

Pose

Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was pose. I was going to try and draw a statue but this figure appeared. I’m not sure whether she’s an artists model or fashion model. I struggled with the hands, I drew the top hand with the thumb on the wrong side to start off with. Just a black and white Artrage app finger painting.

Blue moon and super moon

Moon doodle

It’s not blue and it’s not really super!

There is a super blue moon tonight and tomorrow night. All that means is that there are 13 full moons in this twelve month period and this August there are two in the same month. This is the second and ‘blue’ moon. The moon also happens to be at its closest approach to the Earth, a few thousand miles closer, so it appears slightly bigger in the sky. The moons orbit is elliptical, so it has two centres of gravity and so sometimes it appears closer and sometimes further away. The next super blue moon will be in 2037. There are lots of articles on the Internet about it today.

Mow Cop Castle

What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?

So I could draw it

I had to do a drawing prompt for an art group that I’m in and I wanted to draw something old with ‘nooks and crannies’ which was the prompt.

I love the phrase, I think of old buildings, of old corridors and priest holes that people could hide in. Like Cavaliers hiding from Roundheads. Of hidden treasures, or pirates gold doubloons.

Mow Cop Castle is actually a folly, it was built on top of Mow Cop Hill that looks out over the Cheshire plain. It was never a ruined castle, but built to look like one, with the walls built to appear like they are tumbling down, and it’s silhouette is very striking as you look up to it. If you go up to it you can see the Jodrell Bank Observatory over at Holmes Chapel.

The drawing is not a good representation but it gives you an idea of how it looks.