New paintings and regular art updates.
What a beautiful cat, so sweet so cute,
Sitting there on the counter top.
Let me just get my camera?
Where is it, oh over there..
Just a sec, gotta get the settings right,
It’s dark in here so,
400 iso I think…..
Better get the focus right.
Ok, almost ready,
Ah you are a cute cat,
Head rubs and purrs,
Now for the photo. .
Hold still…..
He’s gone….
Autumn is flying in on strong winds.
I tried to paint its rapid journey. You could almost see the colours changing in front of you as the trees blew in a warm wind from the south.
I ended up with quite a pointellist painting. Lots of tiny dots of colour. Difficult to get the shapes of the branches and limbs right.
Just back from our local barn dance to raise funds for the Penkhull Mystery plays. What a blast! I danced and laughed more today than I have done in ages.
It’s great when you get the dances right, but hilarious when you get them wrong! I started with one partner and ended up with someone else. No one knew how to heel toe then do split the willow or something. Talk about confused, the other groups got it fine but could we? The more we tried the worse it got.
Now I’m shattered but happy. During the evening I also won the raffle 4 times so I didn’t take two of them. Madness, then my partner won a bottle of whisky.
The band were great and the caller was patient with us. But we were awful.
Great fun.
She may be a drawing, a face, a gaze from afar,
She is a woman, a girl, a mother, a sister.
She has feelings, emotions, can laugh and cry,
She sees you, cares for us, hates war and injustice.
She is equal not more, but not less, she counts.
Women and Girls, Mothers and Sisters
=
Men and Boys, Fathers and Brothers.
And
Any other genders that present themselves
=
Human.
Equation complete.
Sometimes I just think about big things, infinity, dark matter and dark energy. I don’t know much about them so I won’t try and lecture anyone about it. It’s just when you hear that the universe is flying apart more and more quickly and that the gravity that holds things together is not going to hold the universe together. There is something called dark matter which apparently helps hold the universe together, but there is also something called dark energy which is forcing it apart. So in the future the universe will spread out more and more till light cannot reach out and darkness will descend as the universe cools …
So that’s cheerful….
Also the idea that the universe splits each time something happens befuddles me. So if a car crashes in one universe it might not in the next. Terry Pratchett the author wrote about going down the wrong trouser leg of time. Each split can split again and again, ad infenitum.
Maybe all the dark matter and energy is the other universes effecting us? I don’t know. I like thinking about things but I don’t always understand them.
These are two small canvases that I worked on yesterday. I used a modelling medium on them to build up textures One had leaf shapes built up on it, and the other a spiral of shallow spikes.
I also bought some brusho. I’d never used it before. It’s a dust or fine crystals that you can either sprinkle on a wet or damp surface or sprinkle on dry and then add water. The colours change when you add water. For instance lemon yellow looks orange in the pot. You also only need to use tiny amounts. I ended up with a paper plate under the canvases to catch the drops. I tried to get the colours to surround the raised sections then used some acrylic colours to delineate the edges of the shapes.
I’ve left them with Etruria Artists at the warehouse to dry out.
Too many things to play with on this phone…
Green and purple,
Orange and red.
Put it down
And go to bed !
This was a painting I must have done in the summer of 1983 or 1984, soon after I finished college I think.
My friend had lots of cats so I did a portrait of her with them.
I wanted to do the painting but didn’t have any stretched canvases to hand so I got some linen canvas and stretched it over a horseshoe shaped chair back with an extra peice of wood nailed in place at the bottom.
The painting was in oils This was before I started using acrylics. After it was finished I gave it to my friend.
A year or two ago it turned up. It had moved house with my friend and she had got it propped up in the kitchen when I visited one day. It was starting to deteriorate because it wasn’t proper canvas and had a couple of holes in it. Bearing in mind it had been painted about 34 years before I guess it has done well. I took photos of it and left.
Sadly the painting got damaged beyond repair when they moved again. But at least I have this photo and I did a small copy which another friend purchased.
It feels like I am letting children go when they go to new homes .You never know if they will survive. At least I know this one’s history.
X
Crash.! Copper leaves rattle to the ground,
Metallic green willow leaves whirl around,
Dizzy spinning red acers, palm shaped, flutter into drifts.
Glowing gold Oak petals shimmer by the canal.
Hidden deep in a pile of leaves a cat waits to pounce on a wood mouse.
Flying like snow the fiery beech leaves burn into the blue sky.
Evergreens wave in envy, wishing they could change colour too.
Waiting for winter the trees stand proud, their autumn uniforms shimmer and billow.
Soon the gaudy clothes will be gone, and nude and chilly the trees will await a soft green spring.
X
You know it’s getting towards Halloween when your local garden centre cafe is decorated in signs like these and stick on blood splattered hand prints, witches and ghostly sheet covered apparitions (why a ghost would wear a sheet defies explanation) .
There’s a couple of places round here that may be haunted. One is the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent.. This old Inn and hotel has even appeared on Britain’s most haunted. It is said to have Ghostly apparitions. I know they do ghost walks around the upper floors. I must go again.
The other place you may find a Ghost is Little Moreton, owned by the National Trust. This is an Elizabethan Hall out on the border between Staffordshire and Cheshire on the A34 Road. It’s an amazing building with a timber frame. There is a long gallery upstairs, and a few eerie corners, and dark places which feel spooky.
One thing we have seen recently are small bat’s 🦇 flitting about in the 🌆 dusk. They come round the back of our house because we have a pond. We have also seen them on the canal at Etruria and also up behind penkhull village hall. I don’t know if they hibernate in the winter or just stay dormant but they are probably feeding themselves up to survive the cold months.
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