Just two of my cats. Sleepy, edited in photodirector. They are on a crochet blanket. I put the photo through photodirector, I like the textured look it creates.
Sleepy edited
Tag: Art
Street
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was street. I painted a street scene when I came to Stoke 40 years ago. I did a copy of it recently and I have a photo of the work in progress on my phone. As this is a digital sketch it’s not accurate and rather messy, but I thought I’d give it a go. Artrage app drawn with a stylus.
Sleeping cat
Sleeping cat. Using Artrage app. I’m having fun using my stylus, much more control than finger painting. This was sketched quickly from life, but the cat moved before I could finishh his paws. The mat is made up, the real one is grey and blue.
Artist, illustrator, singer
List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.
Basically I would work for free if money wasn’t an object. I’m not bothered about sales, it’s the joy of getting my hands on paint, paper, canvas or pen and ink.
If I wasn’t creating art I would join a choir that travelled round and just did spontaneous performances of cool songs. Simply to make people feel better. I would do it without pay, just for the pleasure of entertaining people.
All I would need is enough money for food and shelter. Certainly I would try and share with other artists if money were no object. I would set up a small gallery near the coast and talk to people who visited it, but not as a salesperson, but to discuss art and creativity. I don’t enjoy selling, I’m an artist, not a seller. X
Picassoish pyjamas
Thursdays #bandofsketchers prompt was pyjamas. I’m watching a programme about Picasso and I drew a digital image channelling one of his female portraits. Then I decided to collage it and see if I could make it look like a print for pyjamas. Artrage, incollage and Sketchbook apps used.
Six years ago
I was at the potbank cafe, which was part of the potbank hotel in the grounds of Spode factory site, part of the industrial heritage (and revolution) of Stoke on Trent.
The cafe was taken over by a cafe group called “the quarter”, but the hotel is still there and is based within the industrial architecture on the site.
I think I drew the flower in a jam jar while waiting for a friend? I noticed the deration of the flower stem in the water, an example of how the density of matter changes the way light travels through it. When I was young I hated trying to calculate the angle of defraction. Perhaps I should have drawn it and measured my drawing?
Dotty doodle
Sometimes I have no iea what I’m doing. I just doodle, draw and dabble with textures on the apps in my phone. First drawn in Artrage and then used photodirector to play and change things, then adjusted he colours in Instagram.
Art meme
I wouldn’t normally post a meme here but I love this one. I think art is so important and yet life gets in the way of people becoming artists. There needs to be the freedom to create, I don’t think people can be a square peg squeezed into a round hole. They should be allowed to do art if they want to. X
Clematis and Canal roses
Every so often I paint one of the iconic bottle ovens from Stoke-on-Trent. These were where pottery was originally fired with coal fires. The city would be covered by a pall of thick smoke, morning noon and night.
They sometimes had metal bands wrapped round them to strengthen them, and the old bricks can shine like gold when there is a lovely sunrise or set. Arthur Berry, famous artist of Stoke-on-Trent used to speak about the beauty of the potteries towns. He painted and drew abstracted views of the six towns. He’s known as the potteries Lowry.
This painting is of a derelict oven, I’ve painted clematis growing up it, rewinding the ancient landscape. The blue area represents the local canals, it’s shape mirrors the bottle oven. The flowers in it represent the abstract canal roses that are found adorning canal barges throughout Britain.
Play using photodirector
I started drawing circles, then decided to run it through several iterations of photodirector using it’s AI style button and adding a background of butterflies, then sending it through the AI texturiser again. I think it makes a quite gentle image, I like the colours, enhanced in the Clarendon Instagram filter. I do enjoy experimenting.
