New paintings and regular art updates.
I suppose it would happen. I decided to do a self portrait….. I seem to do them once in a decade. The last one was a drawing about ten years ago.
I’m not sure if painting myself as a Green woman will work, but hopefully it will compliment the portrait of my hubby as a Green man. I’m thinking of offering to do them as portraits for people who are interested in the pagan world.
I’ll share more as it progresses. X
We went to a blacksmithing workshop today and bashed metal with hammers between heating it up in a forge. It took a few hours to learn how to make a coil of metal as a keyring and a letter opener.
Our tutor was Charis Jones, who runs Sculpted Steel at the Forge at Etruria Industrial museum. She patiently talked us through the many steps to turn both a bar and a strip of mild steel into the objects we chose to make. Other choices included a snail and a poker.
I don’t have the grip I used to have and trying to hold a piece of metal in a pair of tongs was very difficult. I dropped my work on the floor a few times, and you can’t just bend over and pick up red hot metal, you have to be very careful. Luckily no one got burned despite handling white hit metal.
The hardest thing is being able to hammer properly, my wrists felt weak and my arms were aching. (They still are).
You can see our efforts and what we were trying to do in the photos. They are next to the examples of how they should look. I overheated my letter opener blade and the tip broke off. Luckily Charis sorted it out (which is why it’s shorter than my hubbies work). He seemed to take to it naturally and it helped calm him down. Very good for concentration and ‘flow’.
I think having an experience like this gives you an insight into how difficult the craft of blacksmithing is. What you realise is that it may look simple, but it isn’t!
X
I got my paintings up at the Brampton museum and art gallery now until the 10th November. I’m part of a group exhibition with fellow artists from the Orme Art group based in Newcastle-under-Lyme.
I’m quite happy that they have hung my Mars painting upside down! After all in space there is no right way up! The art is along a corridor in the museum but they are well displayed and lit. If you are around you can always take a look. It’s at the Brampton museum and art gallery in Newcastle-under-Lyme .
X
Coming up for the autumn / winter. I want to do some more green men and women. If I can do some with frost and snow that would be interesting. I’m looking for pictures of striking faces so that they have character, I’ve found that if I just make them up they get a bit flat and don’t have as much impact. More later….
I’m here at the Open studios and I keep getting tongue tied. I need to explain about my art, but for some reason I become shy, it’s like trying to display my mind to the world. Cut off the top of my head and scoop out all the swirling thoughts time…. But… My good friend came along today, she greeted people cheerfully, asked them into my studio, said how I was a good artist, (by this time my head was in my hands with embarrassment) and encouraged them to think about commissioning me to do some art for them.
I was really pleased and mortified at the same time. I think it’s that British thing if too much modesty. It’s a learned habit that makes you feel like the “I’m not worthy” characters you see on TV or in books. Do you know what I mean? I felt it was far easier to just say “hi” as people walked past.
Thank you my good friend!
Usually I don’t include artists statements because I think my art should be self explanatory. However as I was exhibiting a painting about what Spode means to me, I said that it was about how Spode is now, that I have only been there for a few years. I also said that I wanted to include the history of the buildings and what was going on outside the building and how exciting I had found the experience of painting it.
I think it made sense, it’s difficult to know how long to make it and how much information it required.
One of the things we did at the Spode open days was encourage people to get involved and either draw pictures of spode, draw a design, or write what Spode meant to them on a card. We got a few responses. I think now they are there they may be more on Sunday. The idea was that people could respond to the art exhibition we are holding in the foyer from artists who either work in the building or who have been involved in other projects there or who previously worked in the factory.
Sometimes a painting can need work. After a couple of months, and after already exhibiting “my green man” I decided to do more work on it. The canvas was a bit rough, so when you put paint on it, it didn’t spread evenly and it caught on the surface, leaving tiny little dots where the paint hadn’t stuck. That meant that it looked thin in places and the colour wasn’t strong enough so I have tried to improve the pattern of the leaves and the shading on the face. I’ve used some iridescent turquoise to give it the gleam of dampness. If I do another one I might try and paint frost and ice on it.
Memories of Youdraw, a website I drew at years ago. Each block was tiny and you only had two black pens and two erasers. Together you could use them to draw black and white pictures. The intention was to collect 500,000 drawings. But they had to be acceptable. Sometimes there were rude pictures, scribbles and racist remarks. I was asked to volunteer as a moderator and used to spend hours deleting the bad stuff. It’s an interesting thought to remember all the work I put into it.
These pictures are some of my drawings that I copied from the site then coloured in photoshop. I have others and still own posters that I was sent by Youdraw.com with hundreds of images. They were going to publish a book but I haven’t heard if that will actually happen.
Good memories. X
My latest exhibition is coming up next week. The opening is on 13.9.19 at 6.30pm. There will be wine and snacks (thats what you do at openings).
The Waiting room gallery is at Longport in Stoke-on-Trent. It’s a new gallery and art centre who are also working on Longport railway station and who are trying to restore the historic buildings there. You couldn’t meet a nicer group of people.
I’m very pleased to invite anyone who can come along to see the exhibition.
If you can’t make it I’ve also got paintings exhibited at the Brampton museum in Newcastle-under-Lyme from this weekend to the 10th of November and a painting at Acava Open Studios at Spode Site this weekend. The opening of the Spode show is on Saturday evening. So it’s busy busy busy!
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Mallaband-Brown