New paintings and regular art updates.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was Vow. Hard one to do, I didn’t want to draw a couple at a marriage do I drew two gold rings and adapted a pattern I’d been drawing to try and make it look like lacework. I only spent about ten minutes on the rings. Felt pen drawing again using some metallic pens.
We are rehearsing A Christmas Carol and hubby has got the part of Christmas Present. He’s a bit anxious so he will have a scroll to use with the script on to get through it.
It’s a bit strange to be doing this after three years of Covid, especially being among people who have got bad colds! We sort of sat across the room as much as possible to keep out of range of a cough. I’ve managed to avoid Covid since it emerged in 2019, I hope to carry on in safety.
I have a couple of small parts but my problem isn’t learning the lines as much as following the cues from the line before. But only two weeks to go. I’d better practice more!
When it’s warm, not hot, when the scent from plants wafts gently in the air. Then it’s time to visit the Dorothy Clive Garden in Staffordshire. It’s on the border of Shropshire and Cheshire. As you look down from the tea rooms you can look down over the three counties. It’s pleasant to sit out on the lawn with sandwiches and a cup of tea or scones and jam and cream. I’m imagining that I’m there now. That the cold chill in our living room is actually a gentle breeze blowing over the hill behind us and cooling me down! I might even indulge in an ice cream from the tea room. We would definitely be buying plants to take back to our garden.
The Dorothy Clive Garden was created in memory of her. It is built mainly on a slope with perennial plants in beds around beautiful and unusual trees. Some of the plant combinations are spectacular. There is also a quarry garden filled with trees and rhododendron bushes in glorious flower in the spring. There is a lovely view of a waterfall in the bowl of the quarry garden. Then an extended area of the gardens with drought resistant planting and a laburnum walk under planted with purple Alliums rings the changes. This year we also visited a hothouse with tropical plants at the lower part of the garden. It’s a good place to visit on a summers day.
⚽
No point in pretending
That I love the game
I understand the offside rule
I can explain it
But why should I?
I admired England’s Women
Playing in the European Cup
That was refreshing.
But Premier league?
Expensive, over hyped, boring,
Is my opinion.
And the World Cup venue?
Inequality and slave labour?
A Man’s paradise
Where women are second class
Rainbows are rebuked
Sports washing is preventing
Real freedoms.
Enough said.
Spode reflected and my willow pattern painting. I like pattern and design so doing both of these a few years ago was a delightful challenge. The window frame in the bottom painting was old and peeling and it was fun trying to get a likeness of it. The top painting was a willow pattern platter but using two different images to meld together to create a unique image. The border around the painting was all my own design. (There is a teapot painting on the table but the details are not visible). They are being photographed so I can have cards and prints, they are up for sale at the Arts and Minds Gallery, Veterans Support at Harper Street in Middleport.
I’ve just dropped off a few paintings to the Arts and Minds Gallery at Harper Street in Middleport opposite Middleport Pottery. I have asked them to do some cards from them and they have also taken the pictures to sell for me. It’s really pleasing to have my work included there. The galley has a wide range of beautiful art work. It also is part of a network that supports local veterans and their families. I have been able to show and sell work there because my hubby has a link to the military.
The gallery is warm and friendly and are always supportive. I think it helps that it doesn’t feel exclusive and snobbish. It’s in a great place too, helping to expand the creative area around Middleport pottery in Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
Sunset with dotted line. (top right corner). I think it’s a telephone line not a glitch on the photo. I wanted to get a shot of the winter sky and terraced houses so I stopped to pull over the car on the way back from the gallery at Middleport. It was good to see some blue sky today, but the wind that cleared away a lot of the clouds was quite cold and cutting. And the dotted line? I feel like I should add some text ‘cut along dotted line’ and add a ✂ scissors icon! Even the world can have random glitches, I could literally have cropped it, but no, more interesting like this!
Sitting at my feet, staring up, whiskers showing me how keen he is for me to feed him! He looks thin in this photo, but he’s a really big but soft cat. His nose was scratched by another cat outside because he’s not a fighter. He does let other cats bully him. His nose is healed up now. But I keep an eye on him because sometimes he will get a bit battered. Now he’s walking past me and purring. He wants breakfast…
This was an old drawing I did online a few years ago. It was at the website called Sketchfu (closed about five years ago). I’ve always loved astronomy and this was a good challenge to try and get a reasonably accurate drawing using very simple tools. The hardest thing was getting the image blurred enough to feel realistic. Colours were chosen from a couple of hundred choices. There were only five sized circular pens and a slider to alter the opacity. Plus an eraser to clear away mistakes. You could add layers so you could show your progress, or do a collaboration with other artists, the only real problem was the images took ages to load.
Art is complex, it can mean anything. Art can be good and bad, but one person’s good art is something someone else might loathe. I just edited this image to crop a smaller area and add a circular frame. Now I look at it I can see a series of stacked triangles that look like graffiti. It could represent a Christmas tree, or a forest, or rain on a window distorting an image outside it. It could also be a Christmas tree bauble. The digital filter distorts my linework, and adds textures and pattern to my drawing. The colours were originally felt pens but they to have been altered by the digital filters.
Mallaband-Brown