When I was young I used to practice drawing perspective using one or two vanishing points. When our #bandofsketchers prompt came up as construction I thought I would do something along those lines. Then thinking of Ukraine and how it will need rebuilding I decided to colour it blue and yellow.
used basic photoshop drawing tools to turn my cat into a dragon. She was stretched out on the bed this afternoon and the way she was lying was just right for this.Added some blue sky, and with that cute look it just worked, she could be twisting and turning in the air ready to land on the top branches of a tree, ready to furl her wings and sit and have a peaceful wash or she might be ready for mischeif? Whatever she does she will remain cat sized and gentle.
She could also be a bat cat, or a magpie cat. Genetically manipulated to be catwomans friend, you saw it here first!
The world is nervous because of what is happening in Ukraine. The fight has proved that the Ukrainians will not just give up. There neighbours are supporting them and sanctions are being weilded against their aggressive invaders. But somehow through this morass a peaceful solution needs to be brokered.
This is not a film, its not a story in a book. Humans make stories up to understand what is going on. We cannot just assume things will be OK in the end. Look back in history and it is full of mistakes and missteps.
Have you ever seen the film ‘Dr Strangelove’ starring Peter Sellars in several roles. I won’t write a spoiler, except to say it didn’t finish well.
Let us hope and maybe even pray that things do sort themselves out, and that we can recover and get ourselves out of this mess. Then we have to try and sort out global warming. Otherwise we might find ourselves going to hell in a handbasket!
His paws look so small. A clear example of foreshortening. Where the image looks bigger where it is closer to the lens. If I had taken the photo from right in front of him it would have been more in proportion. Taken from near his feet and his head would look tiny. Also its about depth of field. If you look at the photo it is all in focus, but if you change the depth of field you can get one section of the photo in focus, and other parts (closer or further from the lens) blurred/out of focus. It’s not something you can do with a phones auto focus but probably if I played with the manual settings I could do something? I finally changed it to a black and white filter to emphasise his fur.
Get me some daffs to go with the tulips I said… So he did..
I also asked for some cheese for sandwiches, so he bought really hard cheese like parmizan which you would grate on to pasta. And the quiche I asked for turned into a pizza….
I don’t know if its a tactic to get over being asked to go shopping, I do wonder? I know supermarkets do substitute things, but to say that there was only one sort of cheese in the chiller cabinet? I guess he walked past the cheese and went to the Italian counter instead. And he told me there were lots of daffodil flowers for sale, he’d seen them earlier? But he came back with sprouting bulbs. Clearly he can’t hear or doesn’t understand.
I had been for a walk with a good friend and walked a lot further than I thought I could. Oh what a difference a year makes. I couldn’t walk a third of that distance now. Every time I think I’m going to go for a walk something seems to stop me. For instance this weekend was lovely, but I had an upset stomach (too much information?), so I stayed home. I’m getting increasingly frustrated by this. I want to be out there, walking, painting, being back to normal. Instead I’m just burbling away here. Spinning out my old memories into a web of comfort that doesn’t equate to doing things for real.
Tulips in the kitchen. Now I need some daffodils for tomorrow which is the 1st of March and St David’s day.
Wales has many symbols, the daffodil, the leek and last but not least, the Welsh dragon that appears on their flag.
It is always good to get to March, it is the start of the Metereological Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. I expect we will be blasted by March winds. But tulips and daffodils cheer me up.
1765…and now it’s gone. History destroyed after more than 200 years. Potters going in to drink at the end of a hot shift. Gilders taking a pint of beer. Food served, life passing by. Once a hotel famous in the Midlands. Feared because it was haunted, loved because it was haunted. Life came and went. It became dilapidated but was rescued. Then covid struck and it closed. But friendly people wanted to buy it back off the new owners and turn it into a community building. Something that would see it restored. Now it will probably never rise from its ashes. Photo by Stokie Bloke. Will remove if this is not acceptable to him.
A self portrait I did aged forty but filtered to obscure it. It’s twenty years old and I can’t remember why I did it. I think I was experimenting with photoshop at the time. It’s me wearing a reuse, recycle, repair tee shirt (which I still have somewhere). My hair was in a short bob and I painted the book covers on the bookcase with the titles of all my favourite books. Maybe I will use a different filter and see how that affects the painting. I seem to do a self portrait every ten years, so a while to go till the next one. X