Earthquake, what Earthquake?

Posted on June 29, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged 3.3, Art, Drawing, earthquake, Life, richter scale, shaking ground, Sketching, Staffordshire, tean4 Comments

Richter scale

/ˈrɪktə/

noun

GEOLOGY

a numerical scale for expressing the magnitude of an earthquake on the basis of seismograph oscillations. The more destructive earthquakes typically have magnitudes between about 5.5 and 8.9; it is a logarithmic scale and a difference of one represents an approximate thirtyfold difference in magnitude.

Last night around 8pm there was a small earthquake near Tean in Staffordshire. It registered 3.3 on the richter scale, and houses near to it felt a jolt and their windows rattled.

My friend just asked if we felt anything? No, we didn’t feel a thing. We probably get more shaking from traffic driving past our house. Apparently the UK gets about a thousand earthquake s or tremors a year, and most are only 1 or 2 on the richter scale (or 30 or 900? times smaller). So although 3.3 is high in the UK it’s not bad. I think we may have had a 5 a few years ago.

I couldn’t find an image to use so I drew a ‘geological’ abstract instead, trying to draw something like a fracture or fault moving in the rocks below us….

At the Leopard

Posted on June 29, 2023June 29, 2023 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Art, Emulsion on wallpaper, historic building, Loss, Memory, Murals, Painting, the leopard2 Comments

Before it burnt down, the Leopard Hotel was a great place to visit, the owners asked me to paint a series of murals in the Arnold Bennett suite at the back of the hotel.

Here is one of a few photos a visitor to it took of my paintings. It doesn’t show them clearly, but it does give an idea of the sizes and the distances between them.

I’ve painted murals at other places but the buildings they were in have mostly been demolished! I’m not complaining but I think its sad that all the effort that was put in to paint them has been lost. Some of them were joint projects with artists from Stoke-on-Trent city council. I was just helping on those and wasn’t the main artist so I don’t feel as attached to them as I did with the Leopard. Such a sad loss to the town of Burslem. It was a historic building that had a lot of influence on the lives of its residents.

Knickerbocker glory

Posted on June 28, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1981, delicious, Drawing, Great Orme, Ice cream, knickerbocker glory, Llandudno, Memory, sundae, Wales4 Comments

What’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever eaten?

A knickerbocker glory in the cafe at the top of the Great Orme mountain in Llandudno in Wales.

Why? It’s the only one I ever ate, I was a child, and I was amazed by it.

A tall cold glass with a long spoon, a fan shaped wafer in the top. Vanilla ice cream, fruit (I think cherries and peaches), chocolate and raspberry sauces, and fresh cream…. Well that’s how I remember it! We had gone up on the cable car and it was a real adventure. I think we were staying in Rhyl and had a day trip down the Coast to Llandudno.

I remember deep blue sea and bright blue sky, tall houses and wide, quiet roads. The cable car was scary but fun and the cafe had cool drinks and ice-cream for sale.

I don’t know if I ate the whole knickerbocker glory or if I shared with one of my sisters? It seemed to be huge. I think we chose it because of the picture on the menu? It certainly cooled us down on that hot sunny day. Fifty years later.. I still remember…. Delicious!

Content

Posted on June 28, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Black and white drawing, Content, Drawing, Face, fine line ink pen, silver pen, SketchingLeave a comment

Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was Content. I struggled with this, then looked up ‘content’ online. I found a lot of content faces. This is based on one of them. The drawing is done in fine black ink liner pen. I tried shading with it. Photo taken in quite a dark room so the brightness /contrast is a bit off.

Reds..

Posted on June 28, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Back yard, Colour, Flowers, Fushias, Gardening, Health, Pelagoniums, Poppies, RedLeave a comment

These are a few of my favourite red plants. Well petals not leaves. I love poppies and chuck in a few pelagoniums and fushias.

Photos from a couple of years ago. I’d have planted up a lot of annuals by now but I have had bigger bills to pay, and having problems with shaking and weaker muscles means I cannot shift flowerpots around like I used to. I do hope my health improves. I have to rely on (argue with) hubby to move things about. Anyway I’ll post photos once I’m satisfied with what it looks like.

Small flying horse

Posted on June 28, 2023June 28, 2023 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Colour, Fine Art, Horse, Old painting, Painting, Pegasus, white horse7 Comments

Another old painting from 2015, I’m not quite sure what I was thinking and it’s probably best forgotten!

Things I would change? The colours possibly. I would try and work from a horse photo because this isn’t very anatomically correct, I know it doesn’t actually have wings either! I guess I’ve made it delicate to be light enough to be held up by wings… Strange what you create as an artist.

Old painting

Posted on June 28, 2023June 28, 2023 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Apple, apples coffee house, Art, Fine Art, Life, Painting, Proserpine2 Comments

My friend Apple has a restaurant and also a coffee shop. The shop has been closed for a while because of the pandemic, but now things are calming down she’s trying to reopen it. After three years she’s putting a lot of work into creating a social and friendly space for people to meet up. She’s given herself a month to get things sorted out. I was talking to her and found this photo of an old painting I did based on the painting Proserpine by one of the Pre-Raphaelite artists. I can’t remember the actual artist.

What I did was to try and copy the painting and add an apple instead of a pomegranate to relate to my friends name. You can’t see but I also painted Apples coffee house at the top right on a sign. Sorry the photos a bit blurry!

Flower head

Posted on June 28, 2023June 28, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Ceramic, Flowers, hand built, Head, Life, Pottery, Rain, Sculpture, snapdragon, WaterLeave a comment

Pottery head I made over twenty years ago. It’s planted up with straggly snapdragons this year but this photo from two years ago looks better. I really need to get out in the garden but I don’t seem to have the strength to sort things out at the moment. I’m fed up and I know gardening would help but the heat over the lost few days has made me really weary. It’s been close to 30°C. At least my hubby has been watering plants. Today? We are expecting heavy rain showers, so the plants will get a little water.

I don’t have outfits

Posted on June 27, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged casual, Clothes, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1980, outfit, straight-laced, Tee shirt, tie dye, Trousers21 Comments

If you were forced to wear one outfit over and over again, what would it be?

If I were forced to wear an outfit it would always be a tee shirt and trousers. But I would say that is casual clothing and not an ‘outfit’. I guess if I were forced I might wear dungarees with some sort of blouse? I like being comfortable and I am a bit clumsy so I might spill my coffee or food, so if I wear patterned tee shirts any stains might be less noticeable!

The other reason why I don’t like outfits is that I had to look smart for my job of twenty-five years. It was horrible to wear such straight-laced clothes. And boring. And unimaginative….

One outfit I did like wearing was one of my friends tie dye tee shirts with patchwork trousers. I felt like a real artist when I wore that. I would be happy to wear that until it fell apart!

Red sunsets due

Posted on June 27, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Canada, Dawn, Forest fires, Jet stream, Krakatoa, orange sky, Red sky, Smoke, Sunrise, sunsets, UK, Volcano, Weather2 Comments

I was watching the weather forecast and the smoke from the forest fires in Canada has risen in the atmosphere and had been carried by the jet stream up across the Atlantic and towards the UK. The smoke particles are not low enough to cause breathing problems, but they are in the right place to scatter the light more at sunrise and sunset. This should result in brighter red and orange skies in the morning and evenings.

A similar phenomenon happened when Krakatoa erupted in the 19th Century. Then the volcanic dust that was swept into the sky caused changes in the evening light and blue moons being reported. We have to realise how interconnected the world is.