So much changes

Posted on April 22, 2023 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Life, Memory, Painting, painting at last, Portrait, Sister, Time, Work in progress4 Comments

So much can change when you paint! The initial acrylic sketch, then as I painted I realised the eye on the right was too far over, the nose too long, the mouth too big. Having the paint out the eye and restart was hard. I then realised her pupils were not lined up. I’ve refined the nose and tried to improve the shading. I’ve got to sort out the body and arms (her knee was up and in the way), I want to paint nice neat draping cloth instead of jeans maybe add a floral pattern to her top. Her hair is a 70’s perm, but I will work on that. Need a rest now. Three hours work… Thankfully someone reset my phone so it stays on longer, the screen was fading every minute!

More paintings…

Posted on April 21, 2023April 21, 2023 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Art, Etruria, Etruria Industrial museum, good homes, Paintings, price point, Stoke-on trent4 Comments

It was a busy day today. I forgot I took some other paintings over to Etruria Industrial museum too, and bought some home. I like the idea of people seeing my work, I hope they appreciate it. I don’t expect to sell the work, I guess people don’t have much money at the moment. I offered to halve the prices because my friend said the price point of things selling at the cafe is a lot lower than at a gallery. All I want, though, is for them to go to good homes. I feel like they are baby kittens being released out into the world. What a strange thought!

Tomorrow I’m going to try and paint something new….

Eclipse

Posted on April 21, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1913, Digital drawing, Drawing, Eclipse, Kepler, Life, mandelbrot set, Planets, Thoughts, Western AustraliaLeave a comment

Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.

The word I thought of was Eclipse. I imagine if a shape like this, instead of the moon, could blot out the sun? Could it be an alien ship (I wonder why I’ve imagined that again). It could be a dream I might have tonight, I’d love to be able to direct my dreams…

There was an eclipse over in western Australia a couple of days ago, it tracked across the ocean and totality (the moon blotting out the sun) only happened for a minute or so. I’ve seen partial eclipses but never a total one.

To find out if a star has planets you can look out for dips in the starlight. Kepler, a space telescope has done this. By watching millions of stars, thousands of planets have been found eclipsing their stars. What a wonderful universe we live in…

Wrapped up…

Posted on April 21, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Escape, freedom, Knots, Life, Memory, Poem, Poetry, Sketching, String, Tied, Time, tracks4 Comments

I’m wrapped up in thought

Tied in knots

Fearful and hopeful

Maybe happy?

Trails of thoughts

Run along tracks

I need to slip off

Onto free land

Find my way out

Beyond the gravity

Of memory

Break those bonds

Clear my mind

Float into space….

Green

Posted on April 20, 2023April 20, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #bandofsketchers, Art, Change, Coins, Colourful, Copper, Drawing, Green, pennies, Sketching, Time, VerdigrisLeave a comment

Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt green. I did two versions of this, one a drawing, the other filtered through photodirector. I was going to draw vegetation but then I saw a bright green patch of verdigris on a two pence piece. The colour was amazing compared with the old dull coppers.

I had just done a post about coppering up. Finding loose change to spend, which is why I happened to look in the tub of coins so I used them as my inspiration.

Leaving work

Posted on April 20, 2023April 20, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Change, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1911, History, Life, no regrets, Past, redundant, Time, WorkLeave a comment

Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.

Things happen and suddenly you have to decide what to do. Your life can carry on the same old way or you can adjust it. Mostly though that happens when you get a little older. That’s what happened to me.

I knew I would be OK as I was taking a calculated step, but what I didn’t bank on was Brexit (why?), then the pandemic and now the cost of living crisis, and health issues.

So would I do it again? Yes of course. I know I’m not probably as well off and secure as I would have been, but I know I’m happier. I won’t describe why I left, but I wasn’t happy. Things changed and I could explain, but it’s in the past now. All I know is that I feel more confident, it has definitely helped me grow as a person.

What’s next? I’ll keep trying to make things work. I have to. I wish anyone else who has made a similar decision all the best and good luck.

Shoes and sandals

Posted on April 20, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #bandofsketchers, Art, Black ink, Drawing, Felt pens, Fine line pen, Sandals, Shoes, Sketching1 Comment

Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was shoes, I drew some of our shoes and sandals, you can see which are my hubbys as I only have small feet. I added the patterned carpet background to jazz it up a bit. Felt pen and fine black ink pen.

Question

Posted on April 19, 2023April 19, 2023 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Architecture, Art, cost of living, Design, economy, inflation, Learning, Life, Music, Painting, Question, World4 Comments

Is the cost of living crisis affecting whether you buy or collect art?

As a small time seller of art I’m interested in how the rises in inflation and reduction in pay rises is affecting the Art economy. I’m sure decisions are being made that people either put off buying, or don’t buy art at all.

Art is everywhere, in designs of clothes, furniture, architecture, advertising, maps, car design, and even the Art in people’s walls. The Art economy is worth Billions to the economy as a whole, but I think it is under recognised. We like to be surrounded by visual and auditory stimulation, but do people even notice it’s there. Do you notice a painting on a restaurant wall? Or classical music played in a supermarket. I wonder how things will work out?

Four horses

Posted on April 19, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged AI, Art, Collage, Digital drawing, Digitally manipulated, four horses, Horses, machine learning4 Comments

I am feeling a bit uncreative so I decided to collage my horse drawing from a few days ago. If you can create digitally it allows you the freedom to make something new.

Recently a photographer entered a competition with a piece called something like ‘the electrician’? It was a black and white photo of two women, one behind the other, one had hands on the others shoulders. The photo looked old fashioned and a little bit weird. The photographer refused the prize because the image had been created by an AI, the faces were not real people but had been built up from features by the AI a bit like an identikit photo. It’s called machine learning.

On a similar vein an image of ex president Trump appeared recently apparently marching at the head of a massive crowd of people in New York but if you zoom in the people behind are ‘constructed’ by an AI and their faces are very distorted.

What I’m trying to say is that digital art created by humans is not the same as AI. The difference is hard to pin down. But if a person has control of it does that count as art. I’m sure there is much controversy to come? In the meantime I will continue to digitally draw and manipulate with human control.

Art college

Posted on April 17, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, College, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1909, freedom, History, Home, Life, lucky, Mother, Past, Time2 Comments

Describe a positive thing a family member has done for you.

I will always be grateful for my mother’s encouragement for me to go to art college. She had to work to support us all and when I finished school she might have insisted that I work full time.

Instead she let me go to college (though I had a couple of part time jobs). I initially went on a preparatory course, then left home to do my degree.

I was aware that my cousin who was also artistic had to go to work in a factory and forget her dreams. I don’t know what happened to her after I moved away. But in my case I was always welcomed home in the holidays.

I’m glad my mom gave me the freedom to do art. Learning has always been something that I enjoyed, and to do a subject that I love? I will always be eternally grateful to her.

Going home over the years I realised how proud she was of me. She was always encouraging us all to do the best we could.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Art