Mill

Posted on March 12, 2023March 12, 2023 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Art, Etruria Industrial museum, Fine Art, Harecastle tunnel, Industrial heritage, Jessie Shirley's bone and flint mill, Kidsgrove, Life, Painting, Stoke-on trent4 Comments

Small ‘Mill’ painting sold.

It was very good to hear that my small painting of Etruria Flint Mill had sold to a friend yesterday. It was another in a new style I am experimenting with. I’m using more lines and textures to emphasise the patterns in the bricks and sky and trees. The image is based on a photo of the Mill and Industrial Museum, but I added more white to give a feeling of when it was in use, and the site was dusted with the crushed bones and flints that went into Stoke-on-Trents bone China, their attempt to replicate Porcelain. The canal is brown with rusty water. If you visit Kidsgrove which is to the North of Stoke you can see the canal there is often very orange. The Trent and Mersey canal runs through the Harecastle Tunnel which is another interesting part of our industrial heritage.

I have other work for sale at Arts and Minds Gallery at Harper Street in Middleport opposite Middleport Pottery, Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

An art and book shop

Posted on March 12, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylics, Art, Art supplies, Biography, Books, Canvas, dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1872, Drawing, Life, Paints, Sci fi, Science, shopping spree, SketchingLeave a comment

Where would you go on a shopping spree?

Down to the Arts and Book shop. I’d buy lots of acrylic paints, some watercolours, gouache, oil paints, felt pens, pastels, charcoal, conte crayons, pencils. Then I’d get canvases, large and small in white and black. Cartridge paper, watercolour paper, sketch pads. Glitter, metallic paper, ink, lino to cut for printing.

Science and technology books, sci-fi books, novels, biographies, autobiographical books, historic books, books about galleries, about the renaissance, about astronomy.

Then I would donate half of it to a local school or college, because I would not have space for it all, or time to use it.

Reflected snow

Posted on March 11, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Holly bush, Insect, Life, Moth, Photo, Snowy, Symmetry, WinterLeave a comment

A symmetrical photo created by flipping a photo upside down. The main mass of leaves is a holly bush we have grown in the garden. It’s a bit like a parasol as we have cut off a lot of the lower branches. I like how the resulting photo looks like an insect on its side. I have a brain that likes pareidolia (when you see creatures or faces in shapes). If I was to turn the photo through 90° it might look like a moth?

#motion

Posted on March 10, 2023March 10, 2023 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Devon, Dolphin, Fine Art, Georges, Life, Movement, Painting, Swimming4 Comments

One of the art groups I’m part of put a prompt of #motion on their Facebook page today. I thought of this painting. Acrylic on canvas called Georges from a few years ago. A painting from memory of when I jumped in the sea fully clothed and swam out to a wild dolphin at Challaborough? In Devon. There were people on the beach and people in wetsuits further out. Georges kept swimming past me because I was somewhere in the middle. He’d got lots of scars along his body. I found out from a poster the next day telling people not to swim with him as he was too friendly and had been cut by boat propellers. You can also catch illnesses like pneumonia from breathing the air from their blowhole.

Snowdonia sketch

Posted on March 10, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Beauty, Drawing, Landscape, Life, Memory, Sketching, sky landscape artist, Snowdonia, UK, Wales2 Comments

Drawing from 2021. I was watching Sky Landscape Artist of the year and I decided to do a drawing of Snowdonia in North Wales. This took half an hour. I have relatives that live near to Snowdon so it’s a place I love. The landscape near where I live is more rolling hills, certainly no mountains nearby.

One of the things about the UK is that there are so many variations in the landscape. Flat, hilly, mountainous, green, forested, heathland, waterlogged, dry, arable, coastal. You can see why people fall in love with it.

Silver Sliver?

Posted on March 7, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Cough, Digital manipulation, Drawing, Filters, Flow, Life, mindful, Now, silver, Sketching, Sliver, Sore throat, Time2 Comments

When you sit all day feeling ill with a sore throat and a cough what do you do? I draw wobbly sketches! Play with filters, add colours, use metallic pens. Play with words. I think since I’ve been doing Esther Chilton’s blog challenges (limericks and five word challenges) it’s made me think more about words and how they work. It’s also taking part in #bandofsketchers prompts which gives me the chance to illustrate different ideas. Yes it is just a minor, wobbly, not very clear sketch, and I have put it through digital filters. But it keeps my mind busy and takes it off other thoughts, like feeling too sorry for myself. I think I experience flow, that feeling of time passing without you noticing, and being in the ‘now’? X

Distant

Posted on March 7, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Distance, distant, Drawing, Landscape, Life, Perspective, Sketching, two points of viewLeave a comment

Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was distant. I used to like to play with perspective drawings, using either one or two vanishing points. Both show how buildings or streets dwindle into the distance, becoming distant. It’s also fun to make up your own architecture.

Invisible

Posted on March 6, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #bandofsketchers, Art, Drawing, Ideas, Invisible?, Life, Prompt, Sketching, ThinkingLeave a comment

Sundays #bandofsketchers prompt was Invisible. I imagine the invisible man would have to be naked if he wants to wander about. Or would have to wear bandages or makeup. There was a series on TV with David McCallum. If he drank you might see the coffee going into his stomach-Etc! Until it was actually absorbed. I got the stomach too high up in this sketch.

New ideas?

Posted on March 5, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Daffodils, Environment, Flowers, Helibore, Ideas, Life, Mecanopsis, Nature, Painting, Spring, VincaLeave a comment

I’ve just been to the gallery where II have some of my paintings today. I thought they would be asking me to take some of my paintings away because they have been up too long, but they only wanted me to take one of a poppy field. But I do need to do some new paintings, to swap out with the ones I currently have there. I’m trying to think of spring images, maybe flowers? This is a Vinca. I was also thinking of doing a painting of a Blue himalayan poppy (mecanopsis) or other similar ones like Helibores. Also maybe snowdrops or daffodils. We will see.

And the moon landed on his head….

Posted on March 5, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, domed, Drawing, Head, hit, Hubby, Life, Moon, night light, Oops, Plastic, SketchingLeave a comment

One of my Christmas presents was a night light, about 18 inches in diameter that is based on the moon. It lights up as a full moon but you can also set it to gently run through phases like the real moon with a remote control.

Last night I couldn’t sleep. The nightlight gives enough light, if you sit up in bed, to read a book by. So about six am I got the novel I’m reading out and read for about twenty minutes. Then I lay down to try and sleep. I reached up to turn out the light with the little switch at the base of it. Oops! I pushed too hard, the large plastic domed moon slid off the little nail it was loosely hooked on, it slid sideways as I tried to grab it, and bump! Hit my hubby on the head. He was fast asleep but shouted out wha? Then fell back to sleep. This morning after hooking the moon back up, I asked him if he remembered being hit by the moon. He replied he wondered what had happened? I said the Moon fell on him!

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Art