Three in one!

Posted on March 1, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Daffodils, Dragon, March, meteorological spring, shrove Tuesday, Spring, Time, WalesLeave a comment

St David’s day (the patron Saint of Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿), Shrove Tuesday (pancake day) and the (meteorological) 1st day of Spring. All tied up in one day this year, the 1st of March. I know shrove Tuesday moves around, its generally in February I think? It is connected with Easter which falls on a full moon? And also the 1st of March isn’t always on a Tuesday! So it drifts around the calendar. Also linked with Lent, giving up something for lent, like chocolate, is a well known thing that Christians do at this time of year. St David’s day is celebrated with daffodils, Wales with dragons. I wonder if they have dragons holding daffodils. Then the first day of spring? Apparently the actual start is later in March so this must just be a way of dividing the year up into four equal quarters. Time moves on.

Construction

Posted on March 1, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #bandofsketchers, Art, Blue, Construction, Drawing, Life, Perspective, Sketching, Ukraine, vanishing points, Yellow2 Comments

When I was young I used to practice drawing perspective using one or two vanishing points. When our #bandofsketchers prompt came up as construction I thought I would do something along those lines. Then thinking of Ukraine and how it will need rebuilding I decided to colour it blue and yellow.

cat dragon

Posted on March 1, 2022 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged bat cat, Black and white cat, Cat, Dragon, dragon cat, Fun, Humour, mad idea, Tuxedo cat, WingsLeave a comment

used basic photoshop drawing tools to turn my cat into a dragon. She was stretched out on the bed this afternoon and the way she was lying was just right for this.Added some blue sky, and with that cute look it just worked, she could be twisting and turning in the air ready to land on the top branches of a tree, ready to furl her wings and sit and have a peaceful wash or she might be ready for mischeif? Whatever she does she will remain cat sized and gentle.

She could also be a bat cat, or a magpie cat. Genetically manipulated to be catwomans friend, you saw it here first!

A small sketch

Posted on February 28, 2022March 1, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged blue and yellow, Dove, Peace, Russia, Talking, Thinking, Ukraine, we need to learn2 Comments

Banner, Peace Not War

The world is nervous because of what is happening in Ukraine. The fight has proved that the Ukrainians will not just give up. There neighbours are supporting them and sanctions are being weilded against their aggressive invaders. But somehow through this morass a peaceful solution needs to be brokered.

This is not a film, its not a story in a book. Humans make stories up to understand what is going on. We cannot just assume things will be OK in the end. Look back in history and it is full of mistakes and missteps.

Have you ever seen the film ‘Dr Strangelove’ starring Peter Sellars in several roles. I won’t write a spoiler, except to say it didn’t finish well.

Let us hope and maybe even pray that things do sort themselves out, and that we can recover and get ourselves out of this mess. Then we have to try and sort out global warming. Otherwise we might find ourselves going to hell in a handbasket!

Peace not war

Posted on February 28, 2022February 28, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged a prayer, Dove, Hope, Life, Love, Peace, Poem, Poetry, small poemLeave a comment

Dove

Call for peace

Give life hope

Keep people safe

Forgive evil

Share love.

Little paws

Posted on February 28, 2022 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged automatic setting, Black and white cat, Cat, Foreshortening, manual settings, photo set up, Photography, Tuxedo catLeave a comment

His paws look so small. A clear example of foreshortening. Where the image looks bigger where it is closer to the lens. If I had taken the photo from right in front of him it would have been more in proportion. Taken from near his feet and his head would look tiny. Also its about depth of field. If you look at the photo it is all in focus, but if you change the depth of field you can get one section of the photo in focus, and other parts (closer or further from the lens) blurred/out of focus. It’s not something you can do with a phones auto focus but probably if I played with the manual settings I could do something? I finally changed it to a black and white filter to emphasise his fur.

Daffs

Posted on February 28, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Confused, cut flowers, Flowers, hard cheese, Humour, Pizza, Plats, quiche, Shopping, Silly, sprouting bulbs, Tulips4 Comments

Get me some daffs to go with the tulips I said… So he did..

I also asked for some cheese for sandwiches, so he bought really hard cheese like parmizan which you would grate on to pasta. And the quiche I asked for turned into a pizza….

I don’t know if its a tactic to get over being asked to go shopping, I do wonder? I know supermarkets do substitute things, but to say that there was only one sort of cheese in the chiller cabinet? I guess he walked past the cheese and went to the Italian counter instead. And he told me there were lots of daffodil flowers for sale, he’d seen them earlier? But he came back with sprouting bulbs. Clearly he can’t hear or doesn’t understand.

Sunset last year

Posted on February 28, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged A year ago, Art, Landscape, Life, paint sky, Sketching, Sunset, Time, Watercolour, Watercolour sketch2 Comments

Sunset, watercolour, February 2021.

I had been for a walk with a good friend and walked a lot further than I thought I could. Oh what a difference a year makes. I couldn’t walk a third of that distance now. Every time I think I’m going to go for a walk something seems to stop me. For instance this weekend was lovely, but I had an upset stomach (too much information?), so I stayed home. I’m getting increasingly frustrated by this. I want to be out there, walking, painting, being back to normal. Instead I’m just burbling away here. Spinning out my old memories into a web of comfort that doesn’t equate to doing things for real.

Tulips

Posted on February 28, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Daffodils, Dragon, Flowers, Leek, Life, March, Spring, St David's day, Time, Tulips, Wales1 Comment

Tulips in the kitchen. Now I need some daffodils for tomorrow which is the 1st of March and St David’s day.

Wales has many symbols, the daffodil, the leek and last but not least, the Welsh dragon that appears on their flag.

It is always good to get to March, it is the start of the Metereological Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. I expect we will be blasted by March winds. But tulips and daffodils cheer me up.

Leopard

Posted on February 27, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 1765, burnt, Community, Gone, Leopard, Lost, Sad, Sign, The Leopard HotelLeave a comment

1765…and now it’s gone. History destroyed after more than 200 years. Potters going in to drink at the end of a hot shift. Gilders taking a pint of beer. Food served, life passing by. Once a hotel famous in the Midlands. Feared because it was haunted, loved because it was haunted. Life came and went. It became dilapidated but was rescued. Then covid struck and it closed. But friendly people wanted to buy it back off the new owners and turn it into a community building. Something that would see it restored. Now it will probably never rise from its ashes. Photo by Stokie Bloke. Will remove if this is not acceptable to him.