New paintings and regular art updates.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was Vow. Hard one to do, I didn’t want to draw a couple at a marriage do I drew two gold rings and adapted a pattern I’d been drawing to try and make it look like lacework. I only spent about ten minutes on the rings. Felt pen drawing again using some metallic pens.
This was an old drawing I did online a few years ago. It was at the website called Sketchfu (closed about five years ago). I’ve always loved astronomy and this was a good challenge to try and get a reasonably accurate drawing using very simple tools. The hardest thing was getting the image blurred enough to feel realistic. Colours were chosen from a couple of hundred choices. There were only five sized circular pens and a slider to alter the opacity. Plus an eraser to clear away mistakes. You could add layers so you could show your progress, or do a collaboration with other artists, the only real problem was the images took ages to load.
Art is complex, it can mean anything. Art can be good and bad, but one person’s good art is something someone else might loathe. I just edited this image to crop a smaller area and add a circular frame. Now I look at it I can see a series of stacked triangles that look like graffiti. It could represent a Christmas tree, or a forest, or rain on a window distorting an image outside it. It could also be a Christmas tree bauble. The digital filter distorts my linework, and adds textures and pattern to my drawing. The colours were originally felt pens but they to have been altered by the digital filters.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was radio. A bad and wobbly drawing of my old bush radio. Bought it at a car boot sale years ago. It was covered in emulsion paint that I managed to scrape off. It works, takes a huge battery. Can only get long wave.. Which is OK when there’s a test match on.
Doodle in gold and silver pen. Originally a contoured drawing in three quarter position, I added chequered squares to fill in the spaces. That left the image surrounded by blank paper, so I added silver triangles. The gold ink had covered some of the original drawing so I added black pen shadows. I thought this was a fun idea.
After several weeks away from the yoga class I went back tonight. I do chair yoga as I cannot get up from the floor, but our teacher allows me to adapt positions so I can get the same effect. I also join in the breathing and relaxation parts of the session. The only thing I cannot do are inverted postures, where your head is on the ground and your legs and arms are raised so the blood goes to your head.
I have been doing yoga on and off for a few years, I don’t feel like I’m an expert, I’m not capable of doing some of the moves, but I try my best, which I think is a good part of yoga’s ethos. I am never going to be to do all the balances and postures, but it does help me relax.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was framed. I rarely frame my pictures, I think it’s nicer for the person buying them to chose something. If I do it’s usually quite simple. I do use ‘I wis framed’, in Liverpool Road, Stoke, sometimes as they help you chose what’s best.
It is foggy today, the mist started this afternoon, a cloud coming down low, covering the sun as it set. Blurring and shadowing the skies colours. Now it is more dense, I drove up our hill and the lampposts disappeared, like white smoke was hiding them. It was hard to see through the fog, obstacles hidden until you were almost on top of them. There’s a set of traffic cones half way up our hill where a car partially knocked a wall down. I didn’t see it on the way up! I came home along a different road to avoid it.
Sundays #bandofsketchers prompt was ‘date’ I was going to draw an old mechanical calendar (one that you turn round to change the date) but I can’t find it. So then I decided to sketch a log, cut in half, to represent tree rings (dendrochronology) you can count the rings to find out the age of the tree and as the widths of the rings change with the weather you can also work out the years it was growing.
What have I got to paint…..
It’s a tiny matchbox sized canvas. I painted a pink rabbit for a lady’s grand-daughter while I was at our annual exhibition today. Since I managed that I then was commissioned to paint a dinosaur for her grand-son. Help! I managed the rabbit, after all they are quite like cats with a longer, deeper snout. But there was no WiFi in the hall so I had to say I would do this one at home. I will have to Google what they look like, in the meantime I sketched it out to remind me to do it!
Mallaband-Brown