
I do like a nice cloud
Fluffy and full
Ready to rain
Ponds to fill still,
I like that cumulus
Or maybe a cirrus
Lenticular clouds
Spectacular layers.
Light shines through them
Illuminates your dreams
That silver lining
Will cheer you still.
New paintings and regular art updates.

I do like a nice cloud
Fluffy and full
Ready to rain
Ponds to fill still,
I like that cumulus
Or maybe a cirrus
Lenticular clouds
Spectacular layers.
Light shines through them
Illuminates your dreams
That silver lining
Will cheer you still.

At my old yoga class from twenty years ago, we used to meditate about a golden healing light that you could conjour up to relax and help heal aches and pains. Recently I remembered this, so when I am trying to sleep and struggling to stop circular and intrusive thoughts, I close my eyes and try and notice the flow of blood in the back of my eye. Sometimes I catch sight of a sparkly gold light flowing in waves across my vision. I don’t exactly know what it is, I think it’s linked to my pulse, but it’s definitely a visual thing, not imagined. I then think the words ‘golden healing light’ over and over as I watch the waves of light wafting across my vision. I don’t know if this would be of any help to anyone, but it’s an interesting phenomenon.

Here is another one of my murals from the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. It shows the four creators of the Trent and Mersey canal. I remember two of them are James Brindley , standing, and Josiah Wedgwood, seated on the right. It’s a long time since I painted it, so I can’t remember the names of the other two. It was painted in 2007? I think. This popped up on my Facebook memories today. Sadly it and all the others I painted were destroyed in a fire when the Leopard burnt down early last year.

The Orme Art Group Exhibition is on from the 30th of January at The New Victoria Theatre, Newcastle under Lyme. The theme is Perspectives, the members of the group all have different views and ideas about what we want to create. In this case we are producing two dimensional pieces for this exhibition. If you are in the area please come along and enjoy our work. X

Flipped and duplicated photo of frost seen on the inside of my car windscreen. The reds are from the car colour. The sky was a brilliant pale blue. I’ve boosted the contrast a bit. Making symmetrical patterns really works with images like this.

Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was snail. I remember Brian the snail from the Magic Roundabout children’s TV programme, which I watched in the 1970’s. But this is Mike the snail. I decided to write a limerick for him.
“There was a snail called Mike,
Who decided to go for a hike!
He slid cross the table
To see his friend Mable
I saw him and shouted out YIKES!

I just watched a programme about pottery on the TV. It’s set at the Gladstone Pottery Museum in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent. I like it because people have to do challenges, tonight’s was to create three low relief birds, in a small medium and large sizes. Each one had to represent a real bird. One person did three macaws, another kingfishers, a third falcons. Each contestant made really interesting birds, the standard was very high. One person got Potter of the week, one got eliminated. Its good to see an art based programme with real skills.
The drawing above is a digital finger painting I dis in ArtRage oils a few years ago. It’s meant to be a multicoloured pigeon.

Group of blocks, duplicated in a symmetrical pattern. I think the blues and oranges of the tiles, which are complementary colours add to the composition, as do the strong diagonals created by a bright shaft of sunlight. This was originally a photo taken in the shop at Middleport pottery, I think taken in the autumn.

A combination of objects and their reflections inside and seating and buildings outside. This was three years ago when the place we were visiting was called the Potbank cafe. Now its owned by someone else and called the Quarter. Its based at Eleanora Street on the Spode pottery site in Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent.
Some of the buildings on the Spode site are due to be demolished and apartments are to possibly be built there instead. If it happens it will be sad to see our industrial heritage destroyed in order to build as many ‘units’ as the developers can cram on the site. The view out of this doorway may change, quickly or slowly, no necessarily for the better.

I think it’s a good idea sometimes to take a different view for an image. In this case my friend sent me a photo from three years ago. I used a mirror on the wall to frame the people in the photo. He also sent me a couple of other photos I’d taken, and completely forgotten about. Those both have photos of windows where the view outside and the objects inside are framed by the window. By the way I think the mirror was framed with wooden sticks?