Exhibited three years ago.

I mmust have been feeling cheerful when I did these paintings plus a batik picture of some fish. The first bottle oven painting is an attempt to do a clarice cliff design. If I did it now I would make the building more curved. The batik is sort of a Pices idea. The dragonfly was an interesting compositon and the half bottle oven is meant to be mirrored by blue sky or water in a canal. It is slightly remenicent of a yin yang symbol. The exhibition was held at the warehouse at Etruria industrial museum at Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent three years ago. At the moment we cannot use the building because of covid19.

Where have you been?

Monday
Closed
Tuesday
Closed
Wednesday
Closed
Thursday
Closed
Friday
Closed
Saturday
Closed
Sunday
Closed

Where the sky

looks like sea

and houses float,

where the light is reflected

and you move by boat,

skulling around

and into the air,

following tides

no one knew was there,

washing the sky

with electric blue,

enjoying the world

with a higher view.

A dream like world,

a better place.

A planet in

a different place.

A brand new universe,

To explore in space.

And no WordPress I don’t want to display opening times why won’t you let me delete my mistake?

Looking at glass

I was talking to a fellow artist about drawing and painting glass. We discussed whether it has a blue tinge like water but I disagreed. I suggested he looked at the reflection on glass. Sometimes glass is tinted slightly, uranium glass for instance is yellowish, I said I thought it depended on what is added to it when it’s manufactured. I think if you were to put a glass and a plastic bottle next to each other as an exercise and draw what you see you would probably notice stronger reflections on the glass. Also look at shadows, glass, though usually transparent, throws a shadow…instead of using blue to define it I said try using a bit of grey. Observation is very important.

Missing Barndances

Next month we would probably have been holding a Barn dance in aid of the Penkhull Mystery play (that didn’t happen in July). We would also have started rehearsals for the Penkhull panto, both events, ( the mystery play and the panto) had big audiences. Now our government has decided to cut the number of people who can live in England down to six both inside and out. No more crowds. Sad….

Wheels

White walls or black walls, old fashioned bike wheels are getting hard to find. Everything has gone over to metric and the 27 inch and 26 inch tyres of yesteryear are hard to find now. That’s a problem for people like me with little legs. I had 26 inch wheels and when I had my bike rebuilt they put in 700c’s which are ever so slightly larger. That resulted in my saddle being slightly too high. I always used to lay my bike on the floor to get over the frame, but once I stand it up I can’t get on the saddle. I want to lower that, but the bolt had seized… Might try finding a shopper bike!

Sea images

Which do you prefer? I’ve used a friends photo and duplicated it as it was a interesting image. These are a couple of the resulting ‘layouts’. I do not intend to use these for anything other than an example, so I hope my friend will forgive me. If there is a problem I will delete the photo or use a stock photo to create a similar effect.

Sketching challenge, Glass.

band of sketchers challenge

Todays challenge was to draw ‘glass’. I decided to do something colourful and as I like experiments, I drew in my Sketch app.

I tried to build up layers of colour using the spray paint tool first of all, then an eraser for the label and then paint brush tools, fountain pen and a text tool. It’s a bit wonky donkey, but I don’t think it looks too bad. I used a stylus to try and make neater marks. I might do a few more like this. I’m enjoying these challenges.

Hard work!

Yes that is an exercise bike!

The gap where the Russian vine used to be a few hours hard work helping the builder. Talk about building upper arm strength. We are having some fence replaced tomorrow. Then various other jobs done. I ache all over but I’ve agreed to go for another walk in a few hours. I’m hoping it’s doing me good.

First World countries are mostly too sedentary. Say in front of our screens, forgetting that we are essentially all still cavemen and not really built to be sitting down all the time. I’m almost too old to learn that. But I have. I hope I can keep it up.