Poison words

Posted on September 24, 2023 Posted in Memories, UncategorizedTagged Confidence, cruel, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-2069, Memory, Nasty, poison, Thinking, Time, UncaringLeave a comment

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

I used to be hurt when people said things to me to upset me. I would take on board what they said, and it could lead to several sleepless nights, or mistrusting my judgement or feelings.

After a few years of this I talked to a new friend who explained a way of getting through or over the uncaring words.

What they said was imagine the nasty words are poison. The words are absorbed by the victim (in this case me) and the poison works it’s way into the mind of the person they want to hurt. This affects that person’s confidence, thoughts, security.

But in the meantime the person doing the poisoning walks away scot free. With no effect on them, able to go and place poison elsewhere, spreading their cruelty and getting a rise out of others.

The trick is to realise what they are doing and train yourself to ignore their jibes. Inoculate your mind against their poison and learn to stop their tricks before they can get to you. It really does help.

Seahorse

Posted on September 24, 2023 Posted in Memories, Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Beach, Design, Drawing, Horse, Life, Memory, Sand, Seahorse, Seaside, Sketching2 Comments

On beach holidays I draw seahorses like this on the sand. I will use a stick to draw it out and sometimes use pebbles to decorate it. These drawings are ephemeral, disappearing on the high tide, tracked over by footsteps, lost in windblown sand. Seahorse is a half horse, half fish. I just draw, them for fun.

Slate

Posted on September 24, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #bandofsketchers, Art, ArtRage app, Drawing, Prompt, Sketching, Slate, stylus drawing2 Comments

Slate retaining wall holding up a grassy bank. Drawn in the Artrage app on my phone. Imagined from when we’ve visited the lake district and Wales. There is a metallic slider so I’ve added it to give the slate a wet sheen. For todays #bandofsketchers prompt ‘slate’.

RKB by CMB 23

Posted on September 24, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Digital drawing, Drawing, Hubby, Life, Portrait, sketchbook app, Sketching, Stylus2 Comments

Sketchbook app using the watercolour pen options to create a flowing, wet in wet effect. It’s a portrait of my hubby, watching TV on a quiet Sunday afternoon. I’m so pleased I found my stylus (I had to glue it back together) it’s much more controlled than simple finger painting.

Love and friendship

Posted on September 23, 2023 Posted in Memories, UncategorizedTagged Art, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-2068, Energy, Family, Friends, Life, Negative, Positive, Thinking, Trying to understand4 Comments

What things give you energy?

I’m trying to be honest with this post, I am honest when I blog but I don’t express my emotions here very much. What I will say is that when I’m down I get energy from love and friendship from family and friends. But what I don’t do is seek out those people when I feel sad. I guess I don’t like dragging others down with me. I hide away from them and instead of getting healing energy I feel lower moods.

But when I allow people to know what’s going on, I think I get positive energy from them. Which can lift my mood. It’s just finding a balance, it’s hard to do that.

I think I also get energy from doing art. It increases my enthusiasm to do more. It makes me feel free and able to use my imagination. I get a lot more energy from Art when family and friends enjoy what I do, in that way I know what I’m doing is possibly worthwhile. One thing I do have is imposter syndrome which means I feel like I question my validity a lot. Perhaps that’s why I blog.

Blue remembered horse

Posted on September 23, 2023September 23, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Artrage, Blue, Drawing, Horse, imaginary, Mane, Metallic, Non metallic, SketchingLeave a comment

Artrage oils drawing with the canvas set at a rough setting. I used a red background, then drew a horse on top of it. Used non and metallic pens. Pulled the edges into shape with the eraser tool. Don’t ask abut the blue mane, I was being artistic.

They slept

Posted on September 23, 2023 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Asleep, Black and white cat, Cat, Cats, Comfy?, Resting, Settee, Sleeping, Tuxedo cat4 Comments

These two are getting much more tolerant of each other. They don’t follow each other around, I think the smaller of the two is a few years older, so he sleeps more. But they tend to eat together, and now they are sleeping in the same place. They looked so comfortable that I didn’t move them, I slept sitting upright on the settee until they both got off and went outside.

Today is….

Posted on September 23, 2023 Posted in Memories, UncategorizedTagged Autumn, British summer time, Daylight, Equinox, Greenwich mean time, Memories, Night, Solstice, Spring, Summer, Thinking, WinterLeave a comment

So, we have equal amounts of day and night today according to this.

Days will get shorter than nights until the Winter Solstice around the 21st of December 2023, then lengthen again. In the Southern Hemisphere the days will get longer until their Summer Solstice.

I don’t like the lack of sunlight and the change from British Summer time to Greenwich Mean time also gets to me. We lose an hour of evening daylight in October, although we get lighter mornings. But studies in the 1960’s or 1970’s showed that overall there were less accidents when they kept British Summertime for three years. Sadly the change was abandoned.

Maybe we could revisit the idea? Saving an hours electricity in the winter evenings might even help the environment?

Quackers

Posted on September 23, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Artrage, Diuck, Funny, greetings, Hello, Life, misunderstood, Sketching, Stoke2 Comments

Hello Duck, hello Chick, Deary, Sweet pea, Luv, my Dear, so many ways to greet each other depending on where you live in the UK, (and probably around the world).

Duck used to make me laugh. When I first came to Stoke I literally used to duck! I thought someone was going to throw something at me!

So I’ve drawn a little friendly duck to cheer me up and remind me that misunderstanding can be funny as well as annoying!

War of the worlds

Posted on September 22, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged dailyprompt, dailyprompt-2067, forever autumn, Justin Hayward, Memories, Music, Richard Burton, Songs, War of the worlds2 Comments

What’s your all-time favorite album?

‘The chances of anyone coming from Mars are 100 to 1 they say’. I think that’s how one of the pieces of music starts.

I’m not good at remembering music, but I really enjoyed this album. It was songs interspersed with narration by Richard Burton. It was very atmospheric, the voice of Burton was really extraordinarily in telling the tale of the invasion of Earth by Martians. The songs include Forever Autumn sung by Justin Hayward in 1978. I think that is my favourite song on the album.

I have to admit looking it up on YouTube because I couldn’t remember the title. But hearing it took me back to the student flat where I sat with a cup of tea going cold as I listened to my friend playing the album on a cassette player that they had copied it to.

Hearing it again gave me goosebumps. I’m glad this prompt came up and reminded me of good memories.