New paintings and regular art updates.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was lateral thinking…. I don’t know or Eye know…. A pun and some thoughtful eyes. Love pattern and colour and this was all about being spectacularly ‘spectacular’! Felt pens and fine line black ink pen.
Thursdays #bandofsketchers prompt was solid. I went a bit mad and abstract. I wasn’t sure whether to try and draw platonic solids (not successful). Then I put it through a couple of filters. So it’s colourful and a bit textured.
Last night I went out to choir practice for the first time in several weeks. I wrote this gratitude about it when I got home. When I got there I couldn’t help crying, but a friend came over and calmed me down. We are now the mystery singers for the Christmas season so we were singing songs like Gaudete and Sweet Chiming Bells. Finally we sang While Shepherds watched their flocks by night to the tune of on Ilkley Moor Bah’tat, (although the Carol song might have come first?). By the end of the night I felt OK. So I am very glad I went.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was transparent. I drew a piece of lime floating in a glass of tonic water. It’s hard to draw when your felt pens are drying up. The transparency is difficult to define and delineate. The colours aren’t right, but give an idea of what it looked like.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was vegetables. Just drew some sweet peppers. I like the different colours you can get. Felt pen drawing of them in about twenty minutes. I chose a generic image off the Internet as an example.
Town/City full of buildings sketch. There are many historical buildings in Stoke on Trent but a lot of them are derelict and falling down. Where places like Manchester have had investment old buildings are refurbished and turned into apartments or restored to their former glory. Here in Stoke they languish, are bought up by out of town businesses that allow them to fall down, get broken into or in some cases have unexplained fires. Severs properties in the North of our city have had fires over the last few months. Is it wrong to be suspicious about that? I do wonder and worry that one of the most important areas of industrial and vernacular architecture is not being cared for. We could use the better properties even if we only keep the facades. But our local leaders seem hell bent on stripping back the past, losing a heritage that could be supported. You only have to look at Etruria Industrial Museum to see somewhere that has worked. But I despair for so much of our surroundings.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was dark. I decided to use digital apps for my piece today, artrage oils, sketch app and photodirector in that order. It was fun to create this ‘dark’ horse. Lol, it looks rather strange with added textures and plant silhouettesbut it was fun. X
Draw round anything with a thin pen and you get an interesting effect. It’s something I do occasionally as a meditation. Trying to keep a little distance from coloured splodges or around lines that I have already drawn or doodled. Somehow the lines remind me of the contours on a map, because they seem to join things together. Mostly I look at the back of my pictures and see if the ink has bled through it. I’ve written about this technique here before. It’s a way of creating something a little more abstract.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was South America, I was looking for something unusual and found out that Passion Flowers are native plants of South America. I have to say I’m amazed how complex they are. This is a twenty minute sketch.
Drawing of Etruria Industrial Museum chimney from late last winter. Soon the leaves will be gone again. The museum will hunker down in the rain or possible snow. The industrial archaeology is more visible when the surrounding trees are stripped bare. Life is a cycle, one day its bitterly cold, the next warm and comfortable. I hope to visit the museum again soon. Its run by volunteers who work hard to keep it going.
Mallaband-Brown