Story tiles

Posted on October 23, 2021December 15, 2021 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged BCB, Ceramics, China clay, Cornwall, Fine Art, Jack Clemo, Life, Poet, Pottery, St Austell, writerLeave a comment

A view of St Austell in Cornwall that was at the BCB exhibition recently at Swift House, Stoke-on-Trent. With subtle tones of sepia colour it depicted a semi industrial landscape. I didn’t see a notice but I’m guessing it was made of China clay which has been quarried there for centuries. One of the sites was used to create the Eden Project, a set of giant domed greenhouses or ‘biomes’ which house tropical and arid environments from more equatorial climes.

St Austell is a town in Cornwall inland from the southern coast, in a landscape dotted with abandoned tin mines. It was once the home of a famous poet called Jack Clemo. He was blind but managed to write his poems while supported by his mother in the 1950’s?

Not slept so drew

Posted on October 23, 2021October 23, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, College, Design, Dragon, Drawing, Exciting, Fun, Imagination, Life, Scales, SketchingLeave a comment

Scales again, I was playing with combinations of colour and black and white. I’m building a large collection of them. Maybe this is enough? Next step is to hang them on my character. Discussing the idea with others I might do a dragon that changes throughout the book. Not because I can’t draw it from different angles, but because it might need to change depending on its circumstances….. Hmmm, I keep seeing new directions!

Scales/tessellations

Posted on October 23, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged black fine liner pen, Designs, Dragon, Fish, Fun, interlocking, Lizard, Patterns, scale, Snake, TessellationsLeave a comment

Try and draw a pattern that fits together, so regular shapes interlock. It’s easy with squares or diamonds, triangles or even hexagons, but when you get onto irregular shapes it’s more difficult. Interlocking shapes made up of the same shape over and over are called tessellations I think. Although I’m not sure because tessera are the little squares or oblongs they use in mosaics I think? I really need to look these things up before I write them down!

Anyway I’m working towards drawing dragons, and they are usually covered in scales, like snakes. That led me to realise that ideally I would like an interlocking pattern. I could look at a snake, or a fish, or a lizard, but I just made my own up. I added some crosshatching for shade and patterns for interest. I hope people aren’t getting bored with my experiments!

My hanging baskets

Posted on October 22, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Autumn, Colours, Flowers, Garden, Gardening, Growth, Hanging baskets, Leaves, Plants, Poem, PoetryLeave a comment

Still growing

Flowering, expanding

Drinking in light

Leaves green and patterned

Delicate petals

Give calm delight.

I hope they continue

Until the frost

Destroys

Found, a dragon eye

Posted on October 22, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, College, Dragon, dragon eye, Fun, gaze, miniature, Mythology, Painting, ScalesLeave a comment

I found this in my previous images on WordPress. It’s a tiny picture of a dragons eye that I painted a couple of years ago. Since I’m researching dragons for college and it seems to be something I’ve looked at over several years. This was a miniature piece about 1 1/2 by 2 inches. I was going to do some more but got sidetracked into doing other paintings. Like many of my mythological paintings it’s entirely imagined.

Cloudy

Posted on October 22, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged British summer time, Clouds, Greenwich mean time, Life, Light, Photo, Sunrise, Sunset3 Comments

Sun sets about 6pm now and dark clouds bordered by edges of creamy white. Soon the clocks will be going back and we will lose an hour of light in the afternoons. It’s then I start getting very sad, I don’t suffer from depression, but I just wish we could hold on to that extra hour. I’m not bothered about gaining an extra hour of light in the morning. There was an experiment in the 1970’s in Britain where we kept British Summer time in the winter. They found that there were less accidents involving children because if they were tired this was combated by them being able to see traffic with the lighter evenings. I’m sure there are statistics somewhere on the net that confirms this. For whatever reason the experiment was ended after three years and we reverted to Greenwich mean time in the winter and British Summer time in the summer.

Why go on about this? I think the British Summer time experiment saved energy while it was going on. Somehow less energy was used. Maybe they should think about it again?

Raspberry flower?

Posted on October 22, 2021October 22, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Autumn, Confused, Flower, Gardening, Life, mild temperatures, Photo, Plants, Raspberry, SpringLeave a comment

It’s Mid-october and things were mild but now they are getting colder. Last week we had temperatures in the high teen centigrade and this week they have gone down to 12 or 13 in the day time and 5 or 6°C at night. Leaves are finally starting to change colour but still some plants seem to think its Spring!

My Raspberry plants for instance have come back into flower. I don’t have a close up lens, but I managed to get a photo of this raspberry flower. It’s a bit cold and bedraggled after the cold, heavy rain we had today, but despite a tinge of brown on the edges of its petals its still trying. It probably won’t turn into fruit as there are no insects around now. Still interesting to see.

Big cat

Posted on October 21, 2021October 22, 2021 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Big cat, Black and white cat, Cat, Humour, In the way, Life, Sleeping, Stairs, Tuxedo catLeave a comment

Ex-outside cat slept on the stairs last night. He sometimes sleeps on our bed now but instead he was halfway down and I almost stood on him. He is very big and was lying on about two thirds of the step. Luckily I just saw him in time. He is a real character, when we are in the living room he sits between the arms of the chairs we sit on. He seems to really want to be with us. I hope we have completely gained his trust.

Since he moved in with us he’s put on weight and become much calmer. He seems to be very settled with us now. He also gets on well with our other two cats despite him being twice the size of our small female cat. I can’t imagine a time without cats.

Stand

Posted on October 21, 2021October 22, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #bandofsketchers, art gardinair, Dragon, Drawing, Felt pens, Prompt, Sketching, standLeave a comment

Dragon ‘stand’. Stand was today’s #bandofsketchers prompt so I drew a gardinair stand which is a black and red stand with green leaves and silver highlights. The dragon is meant to be gold or bronze. This was drawn from my imagination.

Would you go into space?

Posted on October 21, 2021October 22, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Astronaught, Life, millionaire, Pandemic, rocket, Space, space tourist, space travel, Thinking, TimeLeave a comment

With the advent of space travel becoming available for space tourists I wonder if its something I would go for.

The cost is exorbitant, in the millions, and the risks must be considered. Also the ones that are going are either very rich or famous. I don’t begrudge them doing it, but I hope this doesn’t turn into a new thing to do on their ‘bucket list’. Maybe instead of going into space for ten minutes they could donate that money to pay for covid vaccines in poor countries, or support working towards cutting pollution or reducing global warming.

Instead of selfish joy rides these space tourists should be more considerate. Me? If I could afford it I would stay with my feet firmly on the ground!

Mallaband-Brown

Category: Uncategorized