Eyes digitally drawn

Posted on April 27, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Artrage oils, Design, Digital art, Doctor, Drawing, Fun, Sci fi, Short story, Spooky, Very short storyLeave a comment

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Don’t look at me like that. It’s scary, she said. The screen stared back, green glaring eyes and red scaled skin. Only the slow movement of its pupils indicated life. The screen had been blank up until a few minutes ago. A voice had said humans were under control by the Jranson Collective and if all people worked with them they would be spared destruction.

She scanned her phone. The same image was being sent to it. All computer services are in our power, said the staring eyes. Do not attempt to attack us.

What the devil can we do? She thought. Nothing came to mind, but maybe? She picked up the land-line phone, a steady dialling tone greeted her. Now what’s the Doctors number? she thought.

Etruria Artists

Posted on April 25, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Design, Etruria Artists, Etruria Industrial museum, Etruria Stoke-on-Trent, Fun, Painting, Potters wheel, Pottery, Staffordshire, Thursday eveningsLeave a comment

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Etruria Artists logo by Robert Cochrane.

Etruria Artists is on tonight. Starting an hour early at 6pm. If you want to come and have a go at painting, drawing or pottery come to the warehouse by lock 40 (summit lock ) of the trent and mersey canal.

Most art materials are provided or you can bring your own.

I’ve had some good times there creating art. It is an old building though and we do close over the winter as it’s only heated when we are in the building so the water has to be turned off in case it freezes and bursts the pipes. I’ve also helped people with advice for using different paints like Acrylics, Watercolours and Gouache…. I’m not trained as an art teacher but I do have some knowledge.

Panda drawing

Posted on April 24, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Challenge, Digital art, Digital drawings, Environment, Panda, Sketchfu2 Comments

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Another sketchfu challenge drawing I did so many years ago. Pandas have been in decline for years. They are limited by the food they eat (bamboo) and their habitat is disappearing like many places where the pressure of agriculture outweighs the needs of animals.

Panda jaws are very strong to chew bamboo which is why they have a fixed characteristic “smile”.

They are iconic animals and the World wide fund for nature uses a stylised panda as its symbol.

There are breeding programmes but nothing can compare to an animal in the wild, not cooped up in a zoo. Unfortunately poaching is a prolem as with other animals like gorillas.

I loved drawing this. Some challenges were a bit irksome but this was fun.

Brolly

Posted on April 24, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Choir, Design, Loud mouth women, Singing, UmbrellaLeave a comment

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When you are an artist you get asked to do odd things. Our choir is going on a parade in May and everyone has been given a brolly (umbrella) to decorate. Thus is my idea for it. It’s already black and white so I thought splashes of red. Lips 💋 to symbolise singing and LMW which is the initials of the choir. (Loud Mouth Women). The choir sings all sorts of different songs and languages so the singing mouths are appropriate.

I hope they will be pleased with it.

New business cards

Posted on April 22, 2019April 22, 2019 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Art, Business cards, Life, Painting, Spode4 Comments

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I’ve had some new business cards. Shiny, new and based on one if my paintings.

My previous set were based on a painting of a spode plate but it’s good to have a change.

Not much else to say really. I’ve decided to just sign my paintings Mallaband-Brown as fitting the Christine or C in takes up a lot of space. These also reflect my love of colour and experiment.

Maybe one day I will be better known, but I’m trying..

Sunday and Monday sketches

Posted on April 22, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Black and white, Dorothy Clive garden, Drawing, Etruria, Life, Sketch, Sketching6 Comments

Not good photos of these. I’ve been using a black felt pen and them a broad nib cartridge pen. I took the photos of them in bright sunshine so they were overexposed. I’ve used the curves option on my phones photo editor to try and get them less bright but on one of them this caused a blue cast. The drawing of the cup is just a doodle because we were messing about with clay.

Oak man

Posted on April 22, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Design, Dorothy Clive garden, Fun, Garden, Green man, Life, Oak man, Plant sale, Plants, StaffordshireLeave a comment

I’m a bit disappointed with my phones camera. Although this image of an oak green man came out OK three other photos of similar green men didn’t register. I think it’s because I have too many photos saved and as most of them are MB not KB they are too large as files so they take up too much space.

This oak man was for sale at the Dorothy Clive garden near Woore, Staffordshire. It was rammed with people, there was a great plant sale on, but it was crowded with hundreds of people. We struggled to get a seat and had a quick lunch. I usually go there to see the rhododendrons in flower but it’s a couple of weeks before they will be out in the quarry garden. In the meantime they had a massive plant sale with stalls so we came home with about 15 varied and interesting plants. Glad to be home to get a rest.

Wallflowers and dianthus

Posted on April 21, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Environment, Gardening, Life, Plants, Spode, Staffordshire, Stoke-on trent, Urban greeningLeave a comment

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I shared this a few days ago as part of a group of photos but I came back to it because I loved the vibrant colours. It goes with my mood today. Gold wallflowers and pink dianthus I think are the types of flowers.

An artist at Spode planted and looks after this area just outside the spode studios. They always cheer me up when I go in. To see them in the middle of industrial delapidation lifts my spirits.

On the road that passes the site there was a project called greening Stoke where various shop fronts and bits of derelict land were planted up with wild flowers. They are still growing. Good to see green in the urban landscape.

Whirlpool galaxy drawing

Posted on April 21, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Atoms, Digital drawing, Digital sketch, Earth, Galaxy, Infinity, Life, Molecules, Reflections, Science, Universe2 Comments

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This took a few hours to draw on the old sketchfu website. I do love astronomy. This is not accurate, it couldn’t be with the limited tools that were on the website but it was fun to try and get a reasonable representation of it. Space is so infinitely beautiful. It makes me realise how tiny I am, how small our planet and solar system are in relationship to the mass of stars in a galaxy and the smallness of galaxies in relation to the infinity of the universe.

How important we think we are, we have so much on this world that we are using up. We are big in comparison with insects and smaller still bacteria. Then even smaller viruses. The smallest things, molecules, Atoms and sub atomic particles.

Apparently we are halfway on the scale of size in the universe. Halfway between the infinitely massive and the incredibly tiny. Perhaps in realising this we can see we are not very important after all. I think we should take more care to preserve our tiny/huge planet so that humankind can continue to survive and flourish.

Etruria Artists

Posted on April 20, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Easter Sunday fun, Etruria, Etruria Artists, Etruria Industrial museum, Exhibition, Hands on clay, Life, Staffordshire, Stoke-on trentLeave a comment

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This group I’m in is starting up again this week. At the moment I haven’t the time to get involved. But in a couple of weeks I might be able to join in again. I’m the meantime if you live in Stoke you might want to give it a look this weekend. Just up the canal from Etruria industrial museum by Summit lock on the trent and merdy canal. I think there is an exhibition on. There will also be the chance to do some hands on clay art work.