Being pestered on Instagram

A comment on my Instagram photo of my cat offers me the opportunity to sell my work as NFTs. I know NF stands for Non Fungible (transactions?). I noticed that a friend of mine has had a similar proposal offered to her. I immediately got that sinking feeling that this is dodgy. My images are covered by my copyright, but what happens if you start selling digital images. Aren’t they sold via crypto currency? How is it converted into something tangible. My art is OK but I wouldn’t say it was exceptional. Isn’t this just a bit of ego polishing? Like vanity publishing, and who gets any profit. I have friends who were going to set up an NFT gallery with a lot of friends art last year, but after a while I didn’t hear anything more. But the thing that really put me off was the silly Trump NFTs which were sold for masses of money, but almost instantly crashed a few weeks later. Until the whole thing is regularised I won’t touch it with a barge pole!

Going to a new home

Autumn painting. A woman with a red umbrella walks through a damp and misty forest with leaves scattered around. I worked from a photo someone lent me so I don’t know who’s photo it was. If there is a copyright issue I will delete this post.

I had problems with the body length and the length of the legs, trying to get them and the arms in proportion. I had to play with the colours and shadows to try and get a realistic light on the figure. I also tried to make the trees bluer to send them back into the distance.

Spectra

Spectrum on a silver/purple cushion and a pink blanket. Digitally manipulated to add symmetry and then twist and move the plain of the picture. I’d like to draw over this to try and create a butterfly shape, but I need to learn a bit more about the new app I am using. I love the rainbow colours cast by a glass crystal in a mobile I have hanging in my window. The different cloths moderate the colours and one is more sparkly than the other in the original photo. (Not shown here).

Sunset

Sunset was Sundays #bandofsketchers prompt. As we arrived at our holiday destination one summer I was amazed to see what appeared to be a tall beam of sunshine above the setting sun. I found out later that it was a sun pillar. I think its a phenomenon where sunlight reflects off ice crystals in the sky? A bit like sun dogs. Can’t find the photo to work off so tried to remember it…

Jupiter in a spin

I’m getting used to a new collage app. Learning all the new plot twists (I mean the tools in it). The main irritation are the in app ads. Get used to it, I won’t upgrade and I won’t buy anything. I am app resistant!

This was a photo of the South Pole of Jupiter that I painted and decided to turn into a symmetrical collage. Matching up the pattern was difficult because it wasn’t similar along the edges, but I did my best.

I’d love a planet to be named after me!

If you could have something named after you, what would it be?

I love astronomy, I don’t know enough about it, but I learn what I can. Red dwarfs, white dwarfs, even brown dwarfs? Supernovae, Nova, planetary nebula. Planets. I probably learnt most of it from a TV programme called the Sky at Night, that used to be presented by Sir Patrick Moore. Since he passed away its been presented by Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Chris Lintott. But it seems to have disappeared off the TV recently with no plans to broadcast it at the moment! What? I’ve been watching it for decades.

You can also do citizen science like things on Zooniverse looking at Mars, or planets round other starts, or even looking for radio signals. I do find the whole thing fascinating. It’s worth looking at https://spaceweather.com for instance to find out about auroras, meteor showers, asteroids and Sunspots.

Egg?

Egg doodle using a newer version of Artrage that I’ve downloaded onto my new phone. Glad I’ve got this one, but other older apps I can no longer find. I will keep looking. It’s frustrating that the gallery images that I’d saved on those apps have disappeared, but you learn and transfer skills to other apps. This is meant to be an Easter egg. Can you tell? Lots more tools on this version, no opacity tool though so you can’t reduce the strength of the pen with a slider, and the old choice had a dry pen, and three other style of pens that I can’t remember now? But fun none the less.