New paintings and regular art updates.
I managed to step down a four inch step at the backdoor with hubbys help. Took photos of the hanging baskets before autumn starts to chill them…
Just feeling a bit of sunshine on my face was lovely. As I was helped inside again I spotted the pale grey moth with dark markings was resting, wings out on the back door, bonus! Outside at last, even if it was only a few minutes. X
Where did your name come from?
If I had a name like Archer or Baker I could assume my name had come down from the work my family used to do. Archer could be a soldier or hunter, Baker a cook or a bread maker.
But where does Mallaband or Brown come from? One is a strange name the other ubiquitous. Mallaband was a name that got me bullied at school. If I had a ‘normal’ name I think I would have been overlooked.
When I was little I thought Mallaband could be broken down into Mal la band. I thought it might mean ‘the bad band’. I decided we must have been part of a group of French bandits! What an odd thought.
Later I heard we might have a Yorkshire connections. But this was only a suggestion and there was no indication where it came from. I could join a genealogy website. But I don’t know if it would be something I would be interested in.
Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was flowers. I did a flower sketch using symmetry tools in the Sketchbook app, and I just used a couple of paintbrush tools (salty watercolour and an ink brush). I varied the number of petals on each flower and tried to create something impressionistic.
Shade of blue
Above me and you
Fading into black
When the sun sets.
Stars and planets
Meteors and comets
Fly up in the blue
Through different hues
Cerulean, Cobalt too,
ultra marine all in view.
A limited palette
Restricted to blue.
What motivates you?
I think I’ve always cared about people. My mom used to say I had a soft heart. I like films that you would class as weepies, ones that bought a tear to your eyes. I’d sit on the sofa with my mom and have a good cry.
So I’m motivated to try and support people. I wonder if that is just a perpetuation of a female role model ? It certainly was pushed when we had our careers guidance. It was suggested I went into nursing, I which didn’t set well. Why not a doctor? Anyway by then my motivation had changed. I wanted to be an artist, and for forty years I’ve pursued that role. Not to be famous. Not to make money, but to create art (and care about people).
Although I was not able to attend the Open day at a spode this weekend, I arranged to have one of my paintings Autumn Spring exhibited alongside other people’s artwork. I think it looks quite good. I was experimenting with an abstract idea in 2019 just before Covid arrived. The idea is a mixture of oblong and squares on the Autumn side, all jumbled and crammed together and is opposed to Spring which is more lyrical and fluid. Representing overwhelming waste and damage, and what we are doing to the Earth, and the renewal and regrowth that the Spring could bring.
Cat in a hat mug. My design that I draw to make children laugh if they are grumpy. I’ve been drawing it for years and so I decided to paint it onto a mug a few years ago when we went to a pottery to do some decorating. I don’t even remember where I did it, but the mug says 20, so it must have been three years ago. I have black and white cats but I always imagine this as a ginger tabby cat. X
Cats paw holding my finger this morning. He sleeps next to me at night while I’m stuck in an armchair downstairs. He’s not there all night but sometimes when I wake up his chin is on my hand and he’s snuggled in a tight ball, he seems to want to be close. I think he cares about me.
What are your top ten favorite movies?
I’m going to choose ten starring James Stewart rather than lots of random films…
Mr Smith goes to Washington (an honest politician).
Harvey (costarring an invisible rabbit)
It’s a wonderful life, with Clarence (an Angel)
Destry Rides again (cowboy)
The Philadelphia story,
Winchester ’73 (cowboy)
No Highway in the sky (about metal fatigue in a plane)
The Glenn Miller story
Vertigo (Hitchcock film)
Rear Window (Hitchcock film)
There are many more but these are ones I remember. There is a filmography on Wikipedia with more details of his films. He was an amazing actor and I loved his films from an early age.
Just some paving, but take the photo at an angle and it becomes more interesting… I don’t know why, maybe because of perspective? Perhaps it’s composition. Perhaps it’s to do with the fibonacci spiral? or The Golden section which is pretty much the same thing in spiralling oblongscinsteadvof the actual spiral.
Think of the Great Wave off Kanagawa as the crashing wave spirals around the side of the print with Mount Fuji in the distance.
I think it’s the feeling of movement you can create by changing the position of the image. More interesting than a static set of horizontal and vertical lines…
Mallaband-Brown