Old painting

My friend Apple has a restaurant and also a coffee shop. The shop has been closed for a while because of the pandemic, but now things are calming down she’s trying to reopen it. After three years she’s putting a lot of work into creating a social and friendly space for people to meet up. She’s given herself a month to get things sorted out. I was talking to her and found this photo of an old painting I did based on the painting Proserpine by one of the Pre-Raphaelite artists. I can’t remember the actual artist.

What I did was to try and copy the painting and add an apple instead of a pomegranate to relate to my friends name. You can’t see but I also painted Apples coffee house at the top right on a sign. Sorry the photos a bit blurry!

Too many pictures

How do I reduce the size of my saved photos? I’m getting close to my limit again, so I’m still deleting pictures off blogs. But ideally I want to keep the photos. I could go into a post and edit each individual image, reducing the file size to medium or small? I’d only have to go through thousands of posts? I can’t afford to increase my WordPress /Jetpack package. So I’ll keep fudging things and deleting my most fuzzy or boring photos… Maybe I’ll win the lottery?

Insect puppet!

I think this man sized puppet at Etruria canal festival a couple of weeks ago was meant to be a preying mantis. I didn’t get the details of the puppet theatre company but they are obviously very skilled makers! I think this is absolutely beautiful (sorry if you don’t like insects), the colours are amazing and the way it is painted with such great detail is a tour de force. If anyone knows the name of the puppiteers please let me know, put it in the comments. Then I will edit this post and include it here. X

Butterfly?

I just drew this… I saw a red admiral butterfly outside and wanted to take a photo of it, but it flew off. I decided to draw something against a dark background to make it stand out more. This was drawn in the Artrage app I use, it gives nice metallic effects, hence the abstract look of this butterfly.

Monkey sculpture

Mother and baby macaque Monkey sculpted from an old tree stump. This is at the entrance to the Trentham Monkey Forest. We went a couple of weeks ago and saw a few babies, a bit older than this one. They were swinging off branches and twigs and learning to climb. I think the guide said there have been eight babies born so far this year.

They are happy in our climate because they originate high up in the mountains in North Africa so they are used to wide temperature variations. The monkey forest is part of a group of parks, the rest are in France, and they are working to conserve the Macaque population. Worth a visit.

Blogging!

How do you waste the most time every day?

I curse myself sometimes, because I can spend far too much time blogging and posting to social media.

I do have a purpose, as a part time artist and illustrator I like to keep people informed of what I’ve been doing during the day. So I posted pictures of the life drawing session I went to earlier on today.

I also post little poems, I don’t pretend to be a poet though, if it rhymes that’s a bonus.

Truly though, I ought to give it a break, but is it dopamine hits you get from picking up your phone and seeing you’ve got a like? If social media removed the buttons perhaps they would get less traffic. And that’s what it’s about isn’t it? Keeping people occupied and interested in the next new thing, be it politics or advertising. So then you get the “I’ll just watch one more video” feeling, and by the time you realise its 3.30am in the morning….

So yes, blogging is probably time wasting, it’s also shouting into an echo chamber, you hear yourself, but does anyone else care. As the saying goes “why don’t you just go and do something less boring instead?”….

Hang on, just got a notification, must check my phone…