Digital urban sketch

Posted on April 25, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #uskstoke, Art, Artrage, Artrage oils, Drawing, Footwear, New challenge, Shoes, Sketching, Urban sketchers Stoke on trent2 Comments

Today’s challenge for usk Stoke was to draw my favourite footwear.

I don’t own many pairs of shoes. I’ve got these banana yellow ones, but I haven’t worn them in yet.

This drawing was done on an app called ArtRage. I got the pro version last year as a birthday present.

The drawing is difficult because the colours mix on screen and it’s a bit like painting in liquid butter with a stick, as I was using a stylus. I found getting the size of pens, pencils, or brushes hard, as the size goes from very small, to smallish!

Anyway after faffing about for a while I managed to get a reasonable representation.

Student memories

Posted on April 24, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Coal fire, Friends, History, Life, Memories, Old House, Remembered, Student house, Time, Tumble down houseLeave a comment

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Forty years ago, here are two of my friends who I shared a student house with. Unlike the accommodation today things were different then. It’s like something out of ‘the young ones’ TV series. There was no hot water, just a broken water heater. I hate to say this but there was no bathroom and we used the showers at the college. The washing machine was an old twin tub. Our cooker was gas, but there was no gas fire. Instead we just had a coal fire to warm the whole house. And the toilet was down the yard in an outhouse.

We moved on into a slightly less tumble down house, finished college, and ended up in our own house. But I actually enjoyed life in that house. X

Cupboard, USK S-O-T challenge day 6.

Posted on April 24, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged #uskstoke, Art, Crockery, Cupboard, Cups, Drawing, Glitter, Pottery, Sketching, Staffordshire, Urban sketchers Stoke on trentLeave a comment

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DAY 6 in the new Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent challenge. I used gold glitter and purple pen to cheers this up. I should have let the glitter paint dry. It clogged up my 0.5 ink pen. I used permanent black and purple pens to draw and add shade…. Noticed I’ve got a lot of egg cups and extra mugs tucked away in there.

“Cupboard” isn’t the most inspiring subject, so instead of drawing cans I decided to draw crockery, pots, glasses and egg cups.
X

Outside cat.

Posted on April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Cat, Finding the sun, Indoor cats, Outdoor cat, Outside, Self isolating cats, Sleeping in the sun, Upstairs4 Comments

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The outside cat continues to patrol the garden, curling up, cozy, at night in the shed. He gets treats and extra food. He is warm and snug, and he is enjoying the early spring sunshine.

Our two indoor cats are well. One has retreated upstairs now the sun is coming in more, I find him curled up on the windowledge or asleep on the bed. The female comes downstairs for love. But she is enjoying the spring heat too. They have plenty of food and water. To be honest, I think they are self isolating from us. Keeping out of the way to enjoy a bit of peace and quiet. We’ve never been around so much!

I ache

Posted on April 23, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Garden, Gardening, Manicured, Physical exercise, Plants, Poem, Poetry, Potting up, Tired, Work2 Comments

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The world is growing fast

But I ache

More things to do,

I ache..

Plants to tend and pot up.

I hurt.

Too much tending,

Too much weeding,

Too much trimming and pruning.

Using sinews I forgot I had.

Back aches,

Shoulder aches.

Hands hurt.

Don’t overdo things?

After years of neglect

My garden is being manicured,

And I ache.

Spocks

Posted on April 23, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Drawing, Layout app, Memories, Pattern, Playing, Sketching, SpockLeave a comment

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Funny what pops up on Facebook memories. I don’t exactly remember when I did this, or how. I know how I duplicated it.. But I don’t remember the process of getting to there. I think this is a few years old. It was a quirky idea. Drawing Spock. It must have been when one of the new series of Star Trek films came out?

Man-cave

Posted on April 23, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #uskstoke, Challenge, Day 5, Drawing, Fun, Humour, Life, Lockdown, Man cave, Mess, Pasting tables, Shed, Sketching, Toy trains, Train, Urban SketchersLeave a comment

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Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent day 5, draw inside your shed or garage.

Where do I start. In my case our shed has had all the tools expelled to the outer darkness of our little shed. Instead some rickety pasting tables have been put up. The tops are covered with boxes, lengths of train track, bits of trains, engines, train trucks, stuff…. Plus he’s got different controllers to send power through the tracks. The pasting tables are so warped it’s like the trains are running through hills!

Then he’s got his bike bits, wheels, and a box that the stray cat sleeps in, which is surrounded with bags of straw… I’m allowed in as long as I don’t mess with anything… In the meantime he wants to upgrade things when the lockdown is over. We are going to buy some better tables. Exciting eh?

Fairy drawing

Posted on April 23, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Design, Drawing, Fairy, Fun, Life, Sketch, Sketching, Wire fairyLeave a comment

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I drew this last night. I interpreted my wire fairy as a real one (with embellishments). I wanted to get the picture to look like one of those adult colouring books. I drew the outlines first with a thin black pen, then I shaded it in with spectrum noir coloured metallic pencil crayons. I finally outlined the fairy with a slightly thicker and darker black ink pen. Drawn in a Windsor and Newton heavy weight case bound sketchbook. A5 size.

Something in the post…

Posted on April 22, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blogging, Cake, Chocolate, Custard, Food, Friendship, Post, Rum, Rum cake, Tasty4 Comments

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My friend decided to order this for us on line. Carribean chocolate rum cake. It arrived today, a small cardboard box with a yellow hexagonal box wrapped in bubble wrap inside. When I took it out of the box there was a dark round cake inside, it had a small hole in the middle. It was like a sponge cake. The box said you could microwave it, so I made some custard and warmed it through. Very tasty. And where did it come from. Not Tortuga, but Hampshire. Yummy.

Day four of the new challenge.

Posted on April 22, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged #uskstoke, Art, Breakfast, Challenge, Drawing, Food, Fun, Sketching, Urban sketchers Stoke on trentLeave a comment

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Today’s challenge was breakfast. Unfortunately I’m setting the challenges and I didn’t get up till almost noon! When I finally did break my fast it was two pm. Apologies to any vegetarians out there. But I’ve got to say bacon butties really taste nice when you are hungry.

My drawing was with a black felt pen, then coloured in with blue, red, brown, yellow, green and purple felt pens. The USK challenge is getting a few participants, its enjoyable to draw every day and having set themes makes you think!

Mallaband-Brown

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