Buttons, marbles and a hair tie.

I collect ‘stuff’, I have ‘collections’ or as others would call it ‘clutter’.

Plants, cat ornaments, paintings, marbles, a few buttons, drawings, sketchbooks, cushions, books (lots of). A few cats, other stuff….. Hubby has bikes, trains, other stuff.

Where do I put it all, where do I keep it? Our house is more like a museum than a home. I need storage, I wish I could shrink it all down and put it on my phone. Or give me a shrink Ray and I can put it all in a dolls house!

Fushias

Fushias in the garden, like little ballerinas, skirts whirling, pale pink over dark pink petals. Stamens hanging down, like little legs pirouetting in a dance on thin air…

The colours thrill. Pinks, browns greens and purples. The background blurs into fluid texture, waiting for your quiet death as cool ice freezes you in withered majesty.

🐬 Dolphin doodle

I was looking at Maori designs for whales and Orcas and saw one for a dolphin. I haven’t copied it but this is similar, with my own spin. I was still thinking of Auntysocials challenge to do something with her black and white piano keys. It won’t be possible to do womething like this without cutting and shaping piano keys. But it’s just an idea. I’m not quite sure why I added the waves. I can imagine the dolphin jumping.

Shouldn’t have added the curly lines to the title. It seems to read dolphik! Or dolphink, oh dear!

Back yard work

Our back yard

Today we had the task of replacing the plants, hanging baskets and pots in the back yard that we had taken down to have a new fence put in. The next door neighbour had allowed us in to get at his side of the wall so we’ve helped him by clearing back the brambles and Ivy and cleared his path so he can get to the back gate.

Now the pots are back I can see which ones have suffered from drought and the cold. They were all crammed together in our garden (on the other side of the house) but it was cold last night so some things have wilted. We have a real microclimate in the yard and it’s always a bit warmer there. Hopefully they will bounce back in the coming days.

Penkhull won the semi final

We won the semi final although someone said our flag looks like a bread wrapper! Now we are in the final next Tuesday against Tiree. I think it looks like a beautiful place, perhaps we will visit one day. However I can’t help hoping Penkhull win.

In my previous post describing the flag I forgot to say the blue colour represents the blue of Spode pottery. This iconic firm closed some time ago, but I have an art studio on the spode site so I feel doubly connected to Penkhulls flag. I will try and find the full description of what it symbolises.

Prompt ‘wood’

Our prompt from band of sketchers today was wood, so instead of drawing some brown furniture I decide to draw the trees outside including a pear tree, buddliea, pine tree and other trees, lots of wood. Our garden is a thicket! I hope you can see it OK, lots of leaves. The pears on the tree are growing larger every day. X

Aunty socials piano keys?

Auntysocial.wordpress.com is asking for a design for her old piano keys, 88 of them, because she’s dismantled her old upright piano. The keys are black and white (over 100 year old ivory). There are photos on her page of what other people have done. I’ve tried to draw something after failing abysmally on a drawing app that let’s you draw circles but not spirals. Anyway this is wonky but I thought some wall art, a square shaped white panel, and with a spiral or two of keys on it, plus some musical notes painted on it. A bit random…. I don’t know.

Eye colour

Playing with ArtRage oils, another app I like to use. I haven’t drawn with it for a while. It’s a free app on android (you can get the ro version with lots of other tools for a price). I like the fact that you can turn up the metallic effects from zero to 100%. There are four brush types. A dry brush and everlasting oils are two of the options. You can also change the size of the brush tools. Maybe it can be a bit fiddly to work with but it’s interesting to use and has a different look to most of the other drawing aps out there.

If you know of other apps, let me know. I want to find other options for drawing.

Exhibited three years ago.

I mmust have been feeling cheerful when I did these paintings plus a batik picture of some fish. The first bottle oven painting is an attempt to do a clarice cliff design. If I did it now I would make the building more curved. The batik is sort of a Pices idea. The dragonfly was an interesting compositon and the half bottle oven is meant to be mirrored by blue sky or water in a canal. It is slightly remenicent of a yin yang symbol. The exhibition was held at the warehouse at Etruria industrial museum at Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent three years ago. At the moment we cannot use the building because of covid19.