New paintings and regular art updates.
Spent most of the day scrolling?
Ignored your cats pleas for love?
Occasionally moved off your chair,
Cup of tea then more scrolling…
Put your phone down
Go and try and do something useful
Or switch on your PC and check your emails!
Trying to catch up… A quick sketch of a sunflower in Artrage app. #bandofsketchers prompt flowers…
It’s been a long time since I’ve done a band of sketchers prompt. I’ve decided to resume so I at least post a bit of art here. I’ve been feeling down for too long. I don’t know if this will help, but I’ve got to try.
Sitting in the dark like Miss Haversham from Great Expectations, or the boy Colin from the story “the secret garden”.
It’s not as bad as it looks, I’m only inside because it’s been a grey wet day. Gloomy and full of cloud. At least the plants are getting watered.
Yes I left the curtains closed, but it wasn’t worth opening them. There was a lorry outside the factory over the road. It was pumping clay slurry. It was pumping all day, very noisy diesel engine. Working all day. They do it once a month. I couldn’t be bothered to look at it so I left them closed. Hoping for brightness tomorrow.
In bud, ready to flower.
Plants with strappy leaves
And trumpet flowers.
Some are so red they are named Lucifer.
Like dragons tongues..
Ready to catch fire…
I actually wrote some 3 minute plays for the Titchy Theatre at the weekend.
One was based on Samuel Becketts “Waiting for Godot”, but my version was “Waiting for Gordon”.
The idea was that two cooks are standing outside the village hall waiting for Gordon Ramsey to come and judge a cookery competition.
First they see a man walking up the hill, but it can’t be Gordon as he’s wearing a cowboy hat and carrying a guitar. The contestants realise it’s a local man and that guitars are not cookery implements, those are called banjos!
Then they see someone else, but although he’s carrying a suitcase and has blond hair and looks like Gordon, he goes into a local bed and breakfast hotel and is not the famous chef.
One of them confesses that they are not sure if Gordon is coming today or tomorrow and cannot check as they don’t have Gordon’s agents phone number.
Finally they ask what time it is and realise that their pavlova will be ruined and their Victoria sponge will be burnt. The final line is “oh well, we will have to come back tomorrow!”
I actually got a few laughs (the script was better that the explanation, and the actors helped make it funnier!)
What time do you go to bed and wake up currently?
I’m not sure when I’m going to bed if I’ll be able to sleep. So therefore I don’t know what time I will wake up! I’ll try and get to bed at the same time each night but then anxiety or pain or other health issues can keep me awake.
Basically I try and sleep on my sides or back, but then find I need to turn over, before having to move again. Never really getting comfortable. I also generally wake up once or twice during the night, which means that I often don’t get back to sleep again.
After a restless night I may sometimes stay asleep till lunchtime. It’s a good thing that I’m not working in a nine to five job!
A writing prompt from Esther Chilton.
My favourite season is Spring. The anticipation of warm weather to come. Flowers and buds emerging after a bleak winter, and birds, bees and animals taking advantage of the newly green fields.
But to be honest this year the, spring seems to have started, but winter is still here in July. Low temperatures, low pressure and 80% of July’s rainfall in just 10 days in the UK has made for a dismal start to the summer. The jet stream is south of us scooping down cold and wet air from the Arctic.
Meanwhile Southern Europe is baking in record breaking heat with numerous deaths.
Hopefully it will turn into a mild autumn. Unless the weather morphs into a more wintery scene…..
Do you sing for pleasure, to earn money, to learn something new? Or for mental or physical health?
Singing is good for lung health. It can strengthen both your lungs, chest muscles and help improve your voice. It helps with breathing and can help control your worries. I’ve found it helpful with controlling anxiety. It doesn’t cure it, but it calms it. Yes you could get stage fright, but singing with a choir helps because you are singing with others and that supports all the participants. You learn together and grow together. After about 20 years of singing with the group we sound pretty good. New people join and the group changes, but we all enjoy going or we wouldn’t be there
Some songs are earworms, rolling round and round in your head. Others are hard to pick up. We sometimes drop a tone or sing flat. It’s hard as a low singer to hit the high notes. Some songs are really annoying, but others in the group love them. But as we are all different then we all like a variety of music. Participating is good for you. I’d recommend it to anyone.
Peeled paint surrounds
Dusty window
Spiders webs sprawl
Across the glass.
White paint turns cream
In the decades of sunlight
That has fallen here
Your surface crumpled
Like old age skin.
Black moss like moles
Erupt into bloom
Liver spots of gloom.
Like an aging wine
Gone past your vintage
Turned to vinegar
Terminal decline?
What are you most excited about for the future?
I love images of space, they excite my artistic imagination. I’ve just been watching The Sky at Night, a BBC TV programme about space and astronomy. They had a special programme about the James Webb space telescope as it is the second anniversary of it sending back the first images it took.
JWST has superceeded the Hubble telescope as the foremost in imaging distant stars, nebulae and galaxies. It can see back in time almost to the big bang. And that was 13 billion years ago. It has been able to image data that indicates exo planets, and on a few occasions has actually been able to work out the chemical constituents of their atmospheres through spectroscopy. It has also given us different ways to image our closest neighbours, the planets of the solar system, for example using infra-red filters.
I am really looking forward to seeing new images from JWST, and maybe even trying to paint some of them. X
Mallaband-Brown