New paintings and regular art updates.
Upright bottle oven somewhere near the canal in Burslem, from a photo I took on a walk with the closer to home group on Saturday. I didn’t have time to stop and read the sign about it as I was at the back of the group. Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt. Metallic silver pen, metallic colours, dried up black felt pens, black felt pen, charcoal stick.
Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was decay. It took me a while to find a subject that I liked. In this case it was a photo I took of an old bottle oven and fencing / boarding reflected in the Trent and Mersey canal. This was near Dolphin boats in Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
I used Boldmere colouring pencils for the drawing which made it paler than the photo. I could use some watercolour washes to increase the depth of colour but I quite like the way this is blended. One thing I didn’t include was the debris floating in the canal after so many windy days.
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Same bottle oven, six different views, three of the oven, three reflected in the surface of the Trent and Mersey canal. Today I walked four and a half miles. We were doing mostly flat walking although there are a few uphill stretches where the locks allow water to be lowered in stages down hill, the barges float into the locks which are either emptied and the water and barge move downhill, or filled, so the barge moves up hill. We noticed a lot of debris from trees and litter was floating in the canal, the weather was so windy yesterday its blown in…
In the snow. Someone is burning rubbish there and the structure isnt safe enough for that. I took the image off the Internet and added texture because I didn’t want to use someone else’s picture but they look amazing in the snow. The caravan at the side may be where the man looking after the site is living.
If you can’t read the writing it says (bit truncated) weeping window, 31. 8.18, middleport pottery.
The drawing is of thousands of ceramic poppies which were displayed on the bottle oven at Middleport pottery, middleport, Stoke-on-Trent in August last year. These poppies had travelled round the country to commemorate the men who had fallen in the first World War.
At one stage the poppies were not going to come to Stoke-on-Trent despite thousands of them being made here. I for one am glad they came.
