New paintings and regular art updates.
Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was secluded. A secluded spot? I’m imagining a river valley with a rocky escarpment on one side. Trees surround green fields on the other. Digital finger painting using my Artrage app. The view seems to be from on a hill overlooking the valley. Entirely imagined.
A real castle in Wales we visited last year. There are so many in the principality that we have visited over the years, this might be Carnarvon. This is in North West Wales but I’m not absolutely sure.
I posted this because it’s a substantial castle, mostly in ruins, a lot of them were built by English King’s to control Wales. This is why the English monarchy has a Prince of Wales who is usually the monarchs son. I’d love to go back.
Bees and hover flies pollenating the flowers, I don’t get out to deadhead them so they are going over (dying back) sooner than usual, but they are still joyously beautiful.
I didn’t realise how much the back yard meant to me ubtil this period of isolation. But I just have to look out of the back door and I see this glorious view. I haven’t taken any recent photos so I must get some before it’s too late. Have a lovely September.
Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.
I went on a wine tasting weekend once. I was on a coach trip and we visited some wineries in the Rhine region. I bought a few bottles of the lovely ‘qualitats wine mit pradicat’ I think that’s how it’s written.
We visited during a holiday weekend so some shops were shut, but everyone we met was friendly. I tried to ask for aspirin for my cold (which made wine tasting difficult). But I said ‘haben du asperin bitte’ and was told I should have said ‘ haben sie’ because ‘du’ is too familiar and only used with close family and friends?
We saw the Rhine and I think a statue of the Rhine maidens from a bridge over the river gorge. We visited a cuckoo clock shop. It was early autumn and the mornings were frosty. Tiny villages clung to the sides of steep hills above the river. It was lovely.
In my dreams I’ve flown to Mars
Months in space beyond our globe.
Spinning microgravity ship
Holds me in its gentle arms
Final days and then descent
Falling through a cold thin air.
Retro rockets saved the day
Landing on a desert of red.
Never going there again
Cost too much and I’m afraid
I’d never spend another night
On Elesyums Planitia’s slopes of red
I’d rather spend my dreams in bed.
An astronaut? Not me, I’ve said.
Acrylic on canvas. Devon beach and rocks on an overcast day. I think its near Plymouth, but the painting is probably 20 years old.
The rocks on this part of the coast are dark and craggy. The water makes them darker, with a slight glint to them. They form layers that slope down into the water and there are plenty of rock pools with barnacles and limpets. There might be small crabs lurking under seaweed in them. Between the rocks the sand is sandy coloured (goldish grey). With flat flakes of rock and stones and pebbles in discreet lines rolled into place by the tides. There are also strands of seaweed left at high tide where sand flies and sand hoppers dwell.
All this rembered because I painted the view.
I took this photo of an old door at Spode pottery five years ago. I guess you could call it shabby. I would not have seen it but there was some work going on at the main entrance to Spode studios so we had to use a side entrance.
I only found this again because of the marvellous Facebook memories. I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of photos I’ve taken since this, but not that many get put online, so this one must have felt special to me.
I think this might have been a pottery mould store, there was a collection of several thousand old pottery moulds that were a historical record of the shapes of the ceramics Spode used to make. Unfortunately I think they were destroyed a couple of years ago because they were not going to be used again. I think that sort of destruction is unforgivable.
A bird in a tree…
I always find finger painting trees and details difficult in digital apps, I really need to find my digital stylus out, but I don’t know where its gone. This was drawn in the Sketchbook app.
Anyway this fits in with the poem I wrote this morning. The bird on the tree is probably a blackbird (it’s difficult to draw something that delicate accurately). I loved creating this because it’s different to my usual style. And I’m really pleased with the colour combination of yellow overlaying black and grey.
One of the problems with sleeping on the sofa… It’s already occupied!
My feet are at this end and the cat thinks it’s great to get in the way. He likes to snuggle in the corner. I added the knitted reindeer for scale. He’s a big cat!
The sun rise is later every day
The birds still wake and sing
At the same time
Their day stretches
From wing tip to wing tip
Music soaring before the sun
Even when night is darkest
Before the dawn
They know to sing…
The liquid notes of the robin
Pierce the night.
Mallaband-Brown