New paintings and regular art updates.
Artist ‘stuff’, paints, paintings, canvases, brushes, boxes, sketch pads, heaters, all my ornaments on the mantelpiece. Carrier bags. I’ve never been this cluttered. Some of its going to have to go. But it’s cheaper than renting the studio. I not letting many people in till I sort it out! But it’s storage not hoarding (yet!)
All that’s left is a small bag of rubbish. My studio was a small space but I fitted a lot in it. Now my living room looks like one of those TV programmes about hoarders! I didn’t realise how much space it would take up and a lot of my paintings have gone to a friend’s studio for a while. I’m going to have to learn to throw things away. It’s not an exciting photo but it means a lot to me. Maybe one day I’ll be able to afford to go back. I’ve got to have some hopes!
Describe something you learned in high school.
I’m not sure what high school is? When I was at school we went to primary, then secondary school. The top (final year) was the sixth form where you took your final exams.
One of those was biology, we studied a lot of information, photosynthesis, stomata in leaves (the holes underneath leaves that allow gases in and out. Things like the function of the kidney (was there something called a glomerulus?), the layers of skin, probably the structure of the eye? I think liking art helped because I could draw diagrams.
I enjoyed biology and am glad I chose it as one of my subjects.
Portrait of my friend.
Today was a sad day, leaving my studio at Spode is a real wrench. I have had to gather up my belongings including paints, canvases, an easle. Even the mirrors on the walls and the nails that supported my paintings over the years I’ve been there.
How do you remove hexagonal mirrors that are glued to a wall? With a claw hammer and very carefully is the answer. Now some paintings are at a friends studio and others are here in my living room. Hopefully I will soon get sorted out.
My college thesis was on Pre Christian Celtic art. I have continued to love the knotwork designs they created. I was interested how the Celts moved westwards across Europe and into the British Isles. Their art was stunning. Various archaeological discoveries of intricate gold and bronze artefacts showed the sophistication of their culture. A massive horde of treasure was found at Sutton Hoo and historical artefacts were found in Halstatt in Austria? I’m sorry it’s 40 years since I wrote it and memory fades.
I continued to draw celtic knotwork, but this style of art needs practice and I haven’t done much of it recently.
A giant cat wrapped around a pottery bottle oven, called keeping warm. I drew this along with a few more cat and pottery designs back in 2017. It just came up on my Facebook memories today. Black and white sketch using a black biro if I remember correctly.
Yellow vase, imagined drawing in Artrage app. My mom used to collect vases made out of Uranium glass. It’s called that because it uses Uranium to colour the glass. It can glow in he dark I think? It’s usually a cloudy greenish yellow. #bandofsketchers prompt was yellow.
Facebook Memory
Sometimes things just pop up on my status and I don’t remember when I drew them. In this case the memory was from five years ago, but the comment said I drew it in 2004. I think that’s right because I wasn’t doing many pencil drawings a few years ago. I think this was from a monthly drawing group. Friends met up at a pub and we would draw each other or customers. I have the Sketchbook somewhere in the house. One of a miriad of them.
Back in the eighties hubby brought a whole load of cadmium colours back from the company where he was doing chemical analysis. I had about eight coffee jars full of cadmium ranging from pale yellow to red to deep maroon. But I didn’t know how to mix them, it was before Google and I had them on a shelf for a year. I also knew Cadmium is a heavy metal although these colours were pigments so hopefully they were safe.
Then a fellow art student asked about them. I agreed to give them to her. I know she used them in many paintings! I often wonder if she used them all, I haven’t seen her for forty years.
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Give me crayons, give me colouring books. Books with paper covered in dots that you wet with a paintbrush and colours emerge.. Dot to dot books, pages with squares on that I could turn into patterns. I might have been a bit older than five for some of these, but I always wanted art things for my birthday or Christmas. I must have heard of artists because I always wanted to be one. I got an etch-a-sketch machine to draw with, I loved that.
My sister wanted to be a musician, she eventually borrowed a violin from school. I got jealous because my parents said I was doing art and they couldn’t let me have a musical instrument, so I overtightened the strings on the violin and they snapped ( bad/very guilty memory!)…
Now? I’ve been an artist all my life. I started drawing when I was a child such as historical people in tudor dress, Asterix the Gaul, horses, clouds, all sorts of things. I still do that, anything is interesting to me.
Mallaband-Brown