New paintings and regular art updates.
Take a photo of a crinkly motorbike cover, shade areas to make a face appear. Use the spray brush tool and a colour picker tool in a drawing app to match in shapes and colours. Add shapes using various pens like chalk or wax crayon options if you have them in your app. Then change the filter to a more black and white/ sepia effect. Finally use a filter to make some areas more fuzzy than others.
Voila you have a spooky, ghostly figure.
After reading the cycling magazine the cat fell into a deep sleep. As I watched him his back legs started to kick and wheel, like he was pushing pedals, hard. In his dreams he was riding a small bike, resting his forepaws on softly covered handle bars. Cycling up and down the rooves, down into guttering, splashing along, kicking leaves down to the ground. Now he’s going for a wheelie, front wheel pulled up. Leaping the gap between two houses, tail flying like a flag. Eventually, after half an hour of chasing his tail on the bike, round and round in rattling circles, he falls gently into a quiet sleep but remembering his ‘mad cat’ adventures.
OK, I dont know why I like this
but this horse
on its side
could be stone
waiting to be carved
hewn out of rock
pumice from a volcano
found in an ancient town
or modern art
tipped sideways to shock
graffitti painted in white
on a famous building?
or slapped onto shutters
before they open
to the next day’s sun.
This was a favourite drawing I did at Sketchfu, I can’t remember if it was a challenge drawing or just something I decided to copy because I liked it so much. I enkoyed trying to show the sunlight penetrating down through the water and catching the Orcas back. Its a bit sketchy but not too bad.
Water changes the colours you see, and the deeper you go, the more towards the blue end of the spectrum the colours become. Reds and yellows fade away as you go deeper, until the blackness in the depths of the water absorbs all light. It is at those depths that you start seeing the dim glows of Angler fish. I actually think it would be fascinating to go down in a submercible and to see some of the otherworldly wonders, but I dont think I ever will. But I can use my imagination…
It was hailing earlier, then a great shower of rain and then the sun came out. That sort of weather when it doesn’t know what it’s doing… Leaves are still on the plants and flowers too. Mainly because it’s been cloudy at night, keeping the heat in a bit. The lowest temperature I’ve seen was about 5.2°C in the middle of the night.
My hanging baskets are looking a bit bedraggled but we will see what happens over the next few days. Life cycles round, winter arrives later every year…
Cats heat bathing. But this isn’t our indoor cats, it’s one indoor and one outdoor one. The outdoor cat has been in half an hour. He usually stays that long, then I think he gets too hot and goes and yowls by the back door, ready to go back outside. In fact that’s exactly what he’s just done. Walked to the back door and mroowl, that’s it. So I let him back out. His introduction has to be on his terms. My boy indoor cat is sniffing where he was sitting. Luckily he’s on a flea treatment so everything should be fine and as mine are inoculated means they should be safe.
Chimney pots outside Cherished Chimneys in Longport, Stoke-on-Trent during Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent’s national sketching weekend in the Summer of 2019. So many shapes and sizes. We bought a couple as planters and filled them full of summer flowers. They make a terrific display because it raises the plants up above the ground. It’s also a good reuse of an object that might otherwise get smashed and used for hard-core on a building site.
Digital ddrawing of cherries I did at the sketchfu website years ago. As you probably know I used to draw there a lot before it closed down. This was one of the challenges we did. Different artists would draw from a photo someone would have posted for us to work from. It helped get me used to drawing digitally. I wish it was still going although as a moderator there it was sometimes hard to cope with some of the things people wrote and drew!
I wish that I was driving on this road, following it round the bends, storing by a stile at the side of the road and climbing over it, walking up the hill, maybe past a few grazing sheep, till at the top I would see mountains in the distance in one direction, and tree covered hills in another. If I looked in one direction hard enough I think I would see a distant view of the sea.
Where am I? I could be in Scotland, or some parts of England, but this winding road is in Wales 🏴 land of ancient people’s and dragons. Wales is in a lockdown for just over two weeks at the moment. I hope the people will all be safe. In the meantime I’m expecting where I am now to have another lockdown soon…. When will this end….
We are in a pandemic and many people in my country (England) are struggling to survive on lower incomes and less hours at work, despite being one of the richest countries in the world.
The situation is only made worse by our government refusing to help pay for free school meals during this coming week. They say they have given 63 million pounds to local councils to help pay for food. Conveniently, they don’t mention that they have been cutting benefits to people over the last ten years, and councils have shrunk by about 75%.
A footballer, Marcus Rashford, has raised the issue and many local businesses and food outlets are trying to help. This led one of the MPs to say it was good to see businesses had bounced back so much that they could now afford to help out!
I’m not saying which party are doing this. I just think that there needs to be more compassion in the world. Not just here but everywhere. We are in a bad situation. Don’t deliberately make it worse!
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