New paintings and regular art updates.
sketching using ArtRage, an app I have on my phone. This was quite hard to do because I’m not quite used to the app yet for straight drawing. It’s getting the colours to blend without them being too pale. I want to use digital art like pencil and paint.
Sundays #bandofsketchers prompt was cool. After looking at various things on a cold day I decided to look for an image on Google. I found a picture of some ice cubes and drew that in my ArtRage app.
Walking with geese
Seeing their goslings,
Round Westport lake
And various puddles.
Soft and fluffy
Yellow and brown.
Fuzzy and pretty
Not like their parents.
When do they transform?
When they grow full feathers
Then full plumage appears
Smart black necks
Brown and white patches.
Growing up quickly
Proud parents delight.
I’ve been invited by my friend and fellow artist Eve Travis to join a group of local artists at The Rigger Venue in Newcastle-under-Lyme on the 19th and 20th of June 2021. The idea is to get the art out of galleries and move it into the community. My vision will be images based on the idea of green men and women. Better get some works done.
I’ve always got scraps at the moment, I cut and glue pictures from one sketchbook to another, I’ve got offcuts of monoprints and post-it notes I’ve made notes on one side of. It seems a shame just to throw them away. Plus it was a use for some old silver foil for the grey clouds.
This was inspired by an orange pink dawn yesterday morning, before the downpour and the fact I’ve noticed Silver birches are actually much whiter these days (cleaner atmosphere?)
I was pleased to find this picture of the Jodrell Bank Observatory in my Facebook memories recently. I think it’s from about 2012.
Jodrell Bank radio telescope was built on the Cheshire plain in the 1950’s near Holmes Chapel. It was built there because it was far enough away from the radio noise given out by big cities like Manchester and Liverpool.
The radio telescope is a large dish shaped telescope, supported by a massive superstructure. Part of it was made from two gun turrets from world war two battleships that act as the pivots for it. The dish can rotate around its axis and from horizontal to vertical so it can scan most of the northern hemisphere.
It’s worth a visit for the day (covid safely). There is an arboretum, the radio telescope, a discovery centre and other interesting exhibits. Check their website for details at https://www.jodrellbank.net
Thursdays #bandofsketchers prompt was new. OK, I struggled with this, then drew a new self portrait using monoprint paper and silver foil, then adding my face as if in a cracked mirror. The mouth is down, but that’s what happens to me when I’m relaxed!
It’s been raining here for days! From when I happened to say to a friend at the end of April, ‘we really need some rain, the farmers are worried they haven’t had enough for their crops’.
Be wary of what you ask for.
Now I remember the old rhyme we used to say when it was always raining ‘rain, rain, go away, come again another day’! It has poured down so hard today you can hear it thrumming on the kitchen roof and battering the windows… Enough! I want to go for a walk!
With a bag? She was staring at me, getting into my mind, so I decided to do a collage with her. This seems to be my creative ‘go to’ at the moment. Photo, then draw onto monoprinted paper, copying the photo. Two holes for her orange eyes. Then stick the paper down. Next post it notes for the bag that holds a couple I’d packs of felt pens. I cut out shapes then drew over it to give it more shading. Finally the mat… Another bit of monoprint. It’s hard to cut out the negative shape of the cat, and the mat is red and green, but I wanted it to stand out from the cat and my red and green pens have just about run out, so I used pink and what was meant to be a pale blue instead. It’s a bit scruffy, I didn’t have enough pattern to extend across the whole page so part of the mat is just coloured in. Anyway it was fun to do. Ignore the date by the way, I hadn’t done anything on the 18th so I filled in the gap.
I doodled a tree in felt pens (four of them held together for the greens, and three for brown and grey), then I added a black patterned monoprint for the fence and clouds. #bandofsketchers prompt…. Catching up..
Mallaband-Brown