New paintings and regular art updates.
No, a mirrored photo, flipped on its vertical axis. The resulting image looks like a green island on a pond edged with a stone path. In actual fact this was a photo taken as we walked along the Trent and Mersey canal near Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent. Its strange how the eye sees symmetry as beautiful. Even ugly shapes can improve when you make them symmetrical. I also enjoy trying to create images that look like animals. If you follow this blog, or my Instagram page you will already know that.
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Two little drawings of mice for my friend Zoe Ainsworth-Grigg. She commissioned me to do a couple of illustrations of mice for a poem. In the poem the baby mice sing. I’m not writing it out as she holds the copyright to it. She just wanted simple line drawings and she was very happy with this.
Take a dried up, broad nib, calligraphy felt pen. Start drawing, watch as the view changes because the line up of images moves when you have the songsheet with the words displayed. Try and sing and draw at the same time! It’s hard to look down at your sketchbook, up at the words, and across to your fellow choir members. I challenged them to try and recognise themselves from these crude sketches.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was cafe/bar. I haven’t been out to a cafe but I decided to use some mono printed black and white paper to create a table and mug. I added colours to define the objects and create a design on the mug. The circles on the table are meant to be splatters from paint can lids..
Wrinkles?
What are they for?
And going grey
What is the point?
Feeling worn out
Losing my mojo
Growing tired
But I ain’t dead yet
I have knowledge
I see patterns in history.
No not grey
Precious silver
Or platinum.
Not wrinkles
But the map of my life.
Strong like a diamond
Moulded by the pressure
Of living.
I’m playing with different ideas. I held two pens together to try and get parallel lines, and I wanted to do something modern, a bit like graffiti for this. The writing says ‘walk this way to get to the treasure trove don’t get bitten on the way through the winding maze.’
There is a gaping mouth and a big staring eye. Big clawed feet and huge ears. The animals body is covered in flowers….fun..
I keep coming back to this tree as it spreads its branches over the view from Penkhull. I have watched it in leaf, with dying leaves, bare and now in bud. It makes me realise how fast a year can pass. The same with gardening, the seasons and plants come and go. And I’m a year older and no wiser….
Bright sun and deep shadow. Looking out over the south of the city of Stoke-on-Trent from Penkhull hill. The gate has a square grill? on it. I like the way the spaces are captured like a square jigsaw puzzle. While people went off to beer gardens we went for a quiet walk instead. Green and blue, white scudding clouds. A pleasant day.
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Along the pier
Walk out to Sea
Across the tide
My life to be?
An old man thinks
Of times gone by
Boyhood days
Of gulls and skies.
Of storms and fog
Waves rolling high.
A girl goes skipping
The length of the pier
In the arcades
Candy floss, she cheers.
A woman now
Looks back in time.
Worm eaten memories
Are lost in rhyme.
From young to old
Each person’s regrets
Are tied together
In their own nets.
Sea and sand
Cliffs and rock
All remembered
As the gulls flock.
St Giles Church Tower, the oldest part of the church.
Saxon Stone, discovered at an excavation site at Blackfriars Abbey. It preceded St Giles. The Abbey was on the site of the church apparently.
Part of the ancient stones from archaeological digs are laid out on the ground next to one side of the tower, round the back of the church.
Walking back towards Newcastle-under-Lyme Town center after our visit to the church (I didn’t take any photos inside as it was open for prayers for the death of Prince Philip).
Pump in the church yard. This was implicated in an outbreak of cholera. The bodies in the churchyard were very shallow lying, only nine inches deep in places, and and fluids carrying cholera leeched into the ground water.
Mallaband-Brown