New paintings and regular art updates.
There is a maze at the far end of Westport lake which we got stuck in (some muddy patches). It’s only got small hedges so you can’t really get lost. Yet another mirrored photo…. And why not?
My collection of them keeps increasing, I look at each view with the thought that I can make it into something quirky.
Why should I?
Seeing this on a bench.
I took a photo
Why not?
Someines memory,
A lost Christmas wreath.
Someone used to sit here?
Recalled in dead foliage
And silk bows..
A duck and a coot. If this was a race, the coot is winning. The twig looks like the finishing line for a rowing race. The duck is a Mallard drake, I don’t know if he’s preening or asleep? I love the ripples on the water. My phone camera has reacted to the bright light and has reduced the exposure time so it appears darker. You can move the position of your camera to affect this. If you look at an area with less bright light then the exposure would open up again. But I like the strong contrast in this image and the depth of colour. It’s difficult to see the details on the birds because they are in deep shadow.
Digital faces, played with in the Layout app. I think this is a couple of years old. I think I did the original drawing in ArtRage oils. To me this feels ancient and modern. I’m thinking of iconic mediaeval paintings. Also with the faces without eyes I somehow think of Heironymous Bosch? Weird images. The columns also make me think about columns of figures in stained glass windows. Each face is the same image, imagined and representing a female face. I did not try to interpret it or give an explanation when I made this image. Perhaps I needed a couple of years to think about it!
Wooden cat ‘bell’ one of the weird things I’ve collected over the years…
I seem to collect cat ornaments and friends give them me as presents, so much so that they clutter up everywhere. I’ve got cheap cats and cheerful ones, a few expensive ones… What other collections? Books and paintings and indoor plants. It’s amazing what you can fit on hotizontal surfaces in a tiny terraced house!
It’s 5.50am and I couldn’t sleep so I drew my cutlery basket and surroundings.. Then I realised the ink from the calligraphy pen isn’t waterproof so did a water wash over it…
#bandofsketchers drawing prompt was basket.
Me when I was a student..
When I came to Stoke as a student our first year was in student flats but then we had to find our own accommodation. Six of us (three couples) shared a terraced house. Two bedrooms upstairs and me and my boyfriend now hubby shared the front living room. No hot water, just a cold tap in the kitchen and a broken electric water heater tap thing over the sink. No bathroom, loo at the end of the yard (freezing cold, you took a torch with you at night). No central heating. Just an open hearth with a grate in the back living room. We used to burn old wood and bits of cheap coal. No TV, just a radio…. I remember one winter it was so cold we slept on the floor in front of the fire. My hubbies crank on his bike snapped when he tried to ride off in the snow because he kept it outside and it was well below freezing. Oh and single pane glass in the windows. Had to go to the Polytechnic every day for a shower…
It was tough but it was fun. When I saw the young ones TV programme a few years later it reminded me of that house!
Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was decay. It took me a while to find a subject that I liked. In this case it was a photo I took of an old bottle oven and fencing / boarding reflected in the Trent and Mersey canal. This was near Dolphin boats in Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
I used Boldmere colouring pencils for the drawing which made it paler than the photo. I could use some watercolour washes to increase the depth of colour but I quite like the way this is blended. One thing I didn’t include was the debris floating in the canal after so many windy days.
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I don’t do book reviews, but I’ve started rereading ‘the Kraken Wakes’ by John Wyndham.
It’s not the most comfortable book to read in the midst of a global pandemic, and like his better known book ‘the day of the Triffids’, it is the story of an alien invasion of global proportions.
The book was written several decades ago when the threat from communism and the Cold War was at its height. Part of the story is the arguments between the west and the east and them blaming each other for losses of ships over deep ocean trenches.
The narrator and his wife are involved from the start, seeing fireballs hit the sea during their trip on a cruise ship.
It continues in three phases, one two and three, that gradually describe what happens as the invasion continues. Some of the language and attitudes are old fashioned because of the age when the book was written. But the book builds tension gradually and as I’m about half way I don’t know how it will turn out.
If you want to read an interesting sci- fi book have a look. There are others including the ‘Midwich Cuckoos’ and ‘The Trouble with Lichen’ that Wyndham wrote.
On Westport lake yesterday. The water was as still as a millpond one minute, then blustery gusts of wind rippled the surface and blurred the reflections.
Seeing a row of geese standing on one leg was an amusing picture. The water was very shallow at the edge, but these are old pit workings I think and there are deep sections. People have drowned in them two lakes, caught up in the weeds that spread inwards from the sides. This is more of a nature reserve than a leasure area and now it is being run by Staffordshire Wildlife Trust you can see how much it has improved. The one fly in the ointment is that the local council is thinking of introducing parking charges. There is a petition against this. A lot of people using the site don’t have the means to pay high prices, and it would probably impact on the cafe when it reopens.. I signed the petition against it…
Mallaband-Brown