Climbing the shelves

Posted on March 13, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Bookcases, Books, Digital manipulation, Filter, Old, Photo, Photodirector, toy owlsLeave a comment

When we had our bookshelves put in I could reach most of the books, now, twenty years later its much more complicated to reach the higher shelves. I can’t stand on the footstool because in not very balanced anymore. There are folding stepladders, but I need to turn them sideways and balance issues and holding on to them is the problem. My left arm shakes which makes it hard to hold on. Hubby makes it worse by not putting them back! Sometimes I can squeeze books on the lower shelves, but often they end up stacked on the floor and are then a trip hazard. There is also stuff in front of the bookcases because I can’t move it upstairs or to my studio. Life can be difficult. But I’m too attached to them to get rid of them!

Dear me at 100

Posted on March 13, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged bucket list, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1873, Halleys comet, Learning, Letter, Thinking, to myself at 1003 Comments

Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.

Dear me

I never expected to get to 100, although I really wanted to. I enjoy being creative and learning new things. When I was young I always got bored, so I found things to do. The more I did that, the more I tried to do. Art, science, astronomy, pottery, reading. Lots of nonsensical things too.

I think using my mind is important, I hope I still have all my marbles when I reach 100. I once met a woman who was in her mid seventies and said she had no room in her brain to learn more! Why? It doesn’t make sense. Finding out new things renews me. It gives me the opportunity to understand more. I hope that me at 100 can still take in information and keep up to date with what is going on in the world.

I really wanted to see Halleys comet return. I hope future me saw it? Its on my bucket list. X

Seven years

Posted on March 12, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Colour, Digital drawing, Digitally manipulated, Facebook, Pattern, seven years, TimeLeave a comment

Seven years ago I created this. I can’t remember exactly how. But it just popped up on my Facebook memories. It’s definitely my style, pattern and colours. I do love the idea of creating something like this, completely abstract using some elements from nature. I don’t know if there are enough pixels to make it work as a print. I’m not sure how many dpi it is.

Mill

Posted on March 12, 2023March 12, 2023 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Art, Etruria Industrial museum, Fine Art, Harecastle tunnel, Industrial heritage, Jessie Shirley's bone and flint mill, Kidsgrove, Life, Painting, Stoke-on trent4 Comments

Small ‘Mill’ painting sold.

It was very good to hear that my small painting of Etruria Flint Mill had sold to a friend yesterday. It was another in a new style I am experimenting with. I’m using more lines and textures to emphasise the patterns in the bricks and sky and trees. The image is based on a photo of the Mill and Industrial Museum, but I added more white to give a feeling of when it was in use, and the site was dusted with the crushed bones and flints that went into Stoke-on-Trents bone China, their attempt to replicate Porcelain. The canal is brown with rusty water. If you visit Kidsgrove which is to the North of Stoke you can see the canal there is often very orange. The Trent and Mersey canal runs through the Harecastle Tunnel which is another interesting part of our industrial heritage.

I have other work for sale at Arts and Minds Gallery at Harper Street in Middleport opposite Middleport Pottery, Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

Musicals, My Fair Lady

Posted on March 12, 2023March 12, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Audrey Hepburn, entertaining, Fun, George Bernard Shaw, Musical, My Fair Lady, Old fashioned, Pigmalion, Review, SingingLeave a comment

I’m currently watching ‘My Fair Lady’ a musical based on the story Pigmalion by George Bernard Shaw.

The story is about a flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, who is trying to improve her cockney accented voice by taking lessons from Professor Higgins. She is taken in by the Professor who says he will turn her into someone who sounds like a duchess in six months. However his methods are unfeeling and really push Eliza. The film seems to sympathise with the professor rather than Eliza.

Songs like ‘all I want is a room somewhere’, ‘the rain in spain’ and ‘I could have danced all night’.

Audrey Hepburn stars as Eliza. She was able to sing the songs but they were dubbed by a singer called Marni Nixon, whose voice is in about fifty films!

If you’ve never watched it, you may feel the ideas in it are old fashioned, but it is set in Victorian/Edwardian times. The music is amazing and energetic. Worth watching.

An art and book shop

Posted on March 12, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylics, Art, Art supplies, Biography, Books, Canvas, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1872, Drawing, Life, Paints, Sci fi, Science, shopping spree, SketchingLeave a comment

Where would you go on a shopping spree?

Down to the Arts and Book shop. I’d buy lots of acrylic paints, some watercolours, gouache, oil paints, felt pens, pastels, charcoal, conte crayons, pencils. Then I’d get canvases, large and small in white and black. Cartridge paper, watercolour paper, sketch pads. Glitter, metallic paper, ink, lino to cut for printing.

Science and technology books, sci-fi books, novels, biographies, autobiographical books, historic books, books about galleries, about the renaissance, about astronomy.

Then I would donate half of it to a local school or college, because I would not have space for it all, or time to use it.

Reflected snow

Posted on March 11, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Holly bush, Insect, Life, Moth, Photo, Snowy, Symmetry, WinterLeave a comment

A symmetrical photo created by flipping a photo upside down. The main mass of leaves is a holly bush we have grown in the garden. It’s a bit like a parasol as we have cut off a lot of the lower branches. I like how the resulting photo looks like an insect on its side. I have a brain that likes pareidolia (when you see creatures or faces in shapes). If I was to turn the photo through 90° it might look like a moth?

Evening meal oops!

Posted on March 11, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Baked beans, egg custard, Food, fried egg, Mistake, oven chips, salt and vinegar, TeaLeave a comment

I started cooking some oven chips and baked beans for tea. I didn’t want to cook anything complicated as I’m still ill. I reached in the fridge to get the pies my hubby had bought to go with it….. Oops! What I found were sweet egg custard tarts. Not a combination that would be very palatable!

So I cooked a couple of eggs to go with the other food. They were tasty and did the trick.

Next time I will check what is in the paper bag before deciding what to cook. The custard tarts made a nice dessert, probably too much egg for one meal, but filling.

Sleepy and cold

Posted on March 11, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Bed, Cold, freezing cold, Life, lucky, on the street, Reading, Sleep, tent, Thinking, Time, TiredLeave a comment

It was very cold last night so I left the central heating on low. The sky had cleared and I think it was down to – 6°C last night. I was reading in bed, propped up under my moon nightlight, but I was sleepy. Suddenly Thud! The book had fallen on the floor and I had woken with a crick in my neck. I was cold and achy. The moon was clear and bright up in the sky, shining in through the window. Apparently last night there was a 20°C difference between the the coldest place in the UK, about – 16°C and the highest 4°C, so we were about a middling temperature.

Then I thought about anybody in an unheated house, or who are stuck outside in a tent or on the streets. What about them? I was in an old bed, in an old house, but I am so much luckier than a lot of people. Why is there such inequality?

Red sky in the morning!

Posted on March 11, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged automatic photography, bad weather, bright red, Dawn, Exposure, lurid red, manual photography, over exposed, phone photo, Red, Sunrise2 Comments

Amazing how red the sunrise was this morning!

There was a bright red sunrise this morning. If I take the photo on automatic it looks too bright, almost overexposed. So I tried one on manual and dialed down the brightness which was deeper red and more like my own vision.