New paintings and regular art updates.
Just doodling, keeping my hands busy. I might find something to paint but I’m going to give up my studio at Spode as I can no longer afford it. I’m sad because it feels like quitting and I don’t want to but you can only do what you can do. I’m going to try and find a cheaper studio. In the meantime I have a lot of art work that I hope I can get sold. It’s time I had a sale. We will see what happens.
If there was a biography about you, what would the title be?
If someone wrote a biography of me it would be about my art I think.
But I have a lot of lights hidden under a bushel. Lots of knowledge about different things, science, music, nature, history. I’m definitely one of those “Jack of all trades”, I seem to absorb information and retain it.
I can remember songs I haven’t heard for years. Name most of the bones in the body and know where they are located. I’ve had various jobs and worked for over twenty years for one company. I won a student award whilst studying on a college course. I’m reasonably good at using computers in this digital age. I believe I’m well read, but know my knowledge is not all consuming.
But, what gets me really going is art, ancient and modern. I love skill and technical ability, but also innovation and experimentation. I think I have good expertise at art. I must have done much more than 10,000 hours as a painter. But I can still learn. Education and thought are important. That’s me.
Many years ago I joined a stamp collecting club. I don’t know if it was Stanley Gibbons? But every month you got sent sets of stamps in the post to add to your stamp album. I remember the gummed paper that you used to stick them in the album with. Or you could get albums with cellophane over the top of the page to hold the stamps in place.
I remember Noytia CCCP, Greek stamps, ones from Australia, Magya Posta, some British and American ones. As someone with an artistic eye I used to admire them. I loved the colourful ones. Ones with interesting perforations, old ones and different languages printed on them.
Talking to another WordPresser has bought them back into my mind. I remember leaving home for college as a young woman and giving my collection to my sister who also had stamps. I don’t know what happened to them. They might still be somewhere?
I remember using tweezers to pick them up carefully. The enjoyment of looking through the album. The excitement of waiting for stamps that I had ordered. Oh what memories!
This #bandofsketchers prompt was collection. Well I tried to remember my old glass marble collection! I still have some somewhere. In a bowl I think. Drawn in my sketchbook app, I used a stylus, but I’m very shaky today so the lines are a bit wobbly. Do you have a collection?
Write about your dream home.
I need more space. I could build a small studio on the side of my house if I had the money and planning permission. It would be somewhere that didn’t affect the fruit trees in the garden. I would move all my art equipment and works in. That would make more room for all the other things we collected over the years.
I’d also insulate it and add better windows and doors. Maybe underfloor heating.
My income is too low so this is all a pipe dream. Unless of course a Millionaire or Billionaire reads this and feels like making a generous donation? (or I might win the lottery). I would take over the empty house next door to offer accommodation for friends and family and make a gallery downstairs. Then I’d also add a lift to save my knees and hips that are starting to ache more and more x.
Another digital portrait I did on the Sketchfu site. I’m quite pleased that I could use simple tools and create images like this it’s sketchy round the edges because you could only use set sizes of pens, there was no sliding scale of thickness. But there was a good pallette, opacity and transparency tools so I could blend colours to some extent. This is based on a photo of Frodo from the Lord of the Rings film. He is holding his sword Sting.
You get some great, amazingly fantastic news. What’s the first thing you do?
I want the world!
My background is that I come from a very talkative town, always willing to share our stories and jokes. I came to my current city over 40 years ago and found the residents were warm and friendly but had a different take on life.
That doesn’t stop me sharing news with everyone. Recently that’s been a lot of bad news but I’d love for it to be great news instead. I live in hope that I will be able to say one day that this is my news, it’s great, and I want everyone to know. After all if a trouble shared is a trouble halved, then maybe good news shared is amazing news doubled?
I used to draw at a website called Sketchfu before it closed. It had simple tools to draw with, no complicated applets, and consequently it was open to a large number of people.
Eventually it became a massive site and the owners lost interest in it. I was a moderator and had to deal with a lot of problems over the years I was there. I won’t go into details but it included bullying and inappropriate language and messages. There were a few of us that were allowed to remove inappropriate content but it was hard work. (I also moderated another site but did not disclose my role). When someone draws the same rude or racist image over, and over again for hours, but you are there deleting them as they appear, they eventually get fed up and stop. But if you admit you are a moderator you get a lot of stick, so I kept quiet. At one stage I was working in a full time job and coming home and doing four or five hours moderating!
Anyway I loved creating digital drawings, including portraits. I loved doing challenges. Someone would post a photo and we had to try and copy it. I’ve just found some of my old pieces so I might post a few of them over the next few days.
Trying this as my image for woken #bandofsketchers prompt … Digital drawing of a snowdrop woken up in the spring. I have several weeks of prompts to catch up with.
Narrow boat painted on the car park of Westend village in Stoke. It’s on the route of the Newcastle branch of the Trent and Mersey canal that used to run alongside London Road. This photo was taken from the hump in the road in Corporation Street that used to be a canal bridge. I hope they repaint it! It’s much more faded than this but I’ve upped the contrast and saturation because it’s really dull and the paint has peeled off.
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