New paintings and regular art updates.
Walking home, Stoke-on-Trent, about 3.15pm this afternoon. The low sun barred by dark clouds. It didn’t rain but the bright sunshine really shone out behind the clouds. The lamp posts give a sense of scale. You can see the shadow of the cloud on the right cast at an angle so it gives an indication of where the sun is. It never emerged as I walked as the clouds were really slow moving.
Same drawing repeated and coloured. Toooo Close (too close) in red as if a neon sign was lit against a bright green (viral) background. Duplicated to get a feeling of crowded closeness. No one wears a mask. All have faces with staring eyes, All on about the same level so their breathing is near to each other. Title ‘Anxiety 4’,i did three previous sketches.
Blue skies
Warm breezes
Carnations
Their scent pleases
Gentle humming
Od buzzing bees
Fruit ripening
On the trees
I need summer
That warm glow
The sun caresses
There’s no Snow!
The birds are singing
burglars are deterred!
#bandofsketchers prompt today is ‘spine’
I trained as a radiographer so I almost drew a spine from one of my old textbooks. But then I watched Star trek, and remembered the Borg Queen in one of the films, First Contact, so I sketched her.
The cost of energy in the UK is going up 54% in April this year. That means that the average household bill will be around £2000 per year. There are already people having to choose between heating and eating. All this in an age when we have been told (and rightly so) that we need to cut our carbon footprints. There are ideas and suggestions, being considered, but whether those will work no one knows. I am lucky to live in a first world country, but the poorest in the economy will be hit hardest by this price hike. They spend a higher percentage of their money on energy.
Why as an artist, am I writing about this? Partly because it means that creative people are being squeezed. If people have higher bills they can’t afford to pay for luxuries like art, music, restaurants, just anything that they have to balance their bills. It means that children are going to suffer more poverty. Life continues to get difficult.
So we face hard times, but what about the rest of the world? Life is hard, conflict increases, people have lost their homes, people starve. I have no solutions to offer, but I wish things were better.
Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was Shelter.
This is a bit late. Shelter flummoxed me until I saw my cat getting in a box. Then I looked up cat shelters online. Expected to see cat charities but it came up with a load of sweet shelters for outside cats. This pyramid shaped one with a little porch seemed ideal. I don’t know if the door closes but it looks snug. X
Why do I feel hot? I’m melting. Not my age? It’s winter, I’ve got the heating on. But I’m hot. I’m not ill, I was, but I’m getting better. I guess it’s because I have been standing in front of the cooker making tea (evening meal). I was looking for a drawing to show how I feel and this one from a couple of days ago illustrates it well. As you get older life seems to get more complicated. I swear I think bits are going to start falling off me!
Anyway, I’m feeling a bit better. But even so, I think I will have an early night. Life, its wonderful but complex.
The trouble with blogging is that you make friends and then after a while they might disappear. Suddenly they go into the fog of the Internet. It’s not clear if something has happened to them or if they have just left. Thankfully people do write and say they are going sometimes. That’s not as bad. But it leaves a hole in your life when you’ve got used to reading their words. You can go back and look at previous posts but it’s not the same. Or you can find them on other platforms. I remember finding someone on Instagram after they had left here. But a few months later they left there as well.
It’s also a shock when after losing touch with people over the years you find out they have died. It happened last weekend, someone I had known for a while had passed away. I asked her husband how she was and he said she had died two years ago. He said everyone in the town knew she had passed away. I had to explain that I don’t live in that town so had not found out. I was so sad to have discovered she was gone.
The worst thing I think is Facebook memories. Someone who has died will suddenly appear on a memory. Or their birthday will show up. It can be disturbing. There should be a memorial button. A way of closing an account without erasing them. Meanwhile. If I decide to leave WordPress I will try and remember to let people know. X
Flames of light
Lick the canvas of sky
Bright gouts of pink
Orange, red, purple
Watercolour wash
Or oil paint smother
Icing on the cake
Of the day.
Fire in the sky
A beautiful tie dye.
From May 2020, when I first started my part time illustration course. I am still quite pleased with this drawing. Physically, I was fitter and could draw without shaking too much. I tend to add less details these days too. I’d like to get back to drawing outside. Maybe meet up with urban sketchers again. Even though I havent caught Covid, it’s done things to me mentally. I guess I got a bit of cabin fever during lockdown, and since then it’s been easier to avoid people – you never know if you will just burst into tears… I think I’m OK, god knows what its like for people living through wars or famine. We can still do things here, well some of us can. I worry for people in food poverty or who can’t afford to heat their homes. It all spins round in my head. which is why I’m writing this at 3.11am…. must go to bed.
In the second world war and afterwards they had ordinary people just writing down their everyday lives in diaries. They were collated to record what had happened. There is a film called “Housewife 55” or something like that, which starred Victoria Wood. If you can find it, it’s worth watching, very poignant. maybe they were their own kind of bloggers.
Mallaband-Brown