New paintings and regular art updates.
Walking through the middle of Stoke today, there is a small patch of land next to a car wash that was seeded with wildflowers a few years ago. Every year I walk past and I’m amazed with what springs up. I think the local bees must be happy. Just down the road from there another patch of land in front of a large billboard has become overgrown with buddlea and grass and amazing clover flowers. I hope they don’t get cut down!
There’s something fascinating about the old windows at Spode Works. I took this photo this week in my friend Amy’s studio. It looks out over the back of the ceramic halls that front onto Kingsway in Stoke. The dirt and grime is from the clay dust that still covers much of the site. The buildings are freezing in winter and stay cool in the summer, I think because of the thermal mass of the solid factory.
Time is gradually eroding and changing the structure of the buildings. Buddlea bushes have colonised one of the older parts of the factory and I wonder if they will make it crumble. It will feel strange not to go there anymore.
Ooo the fuzzy buds are opening on the old willow tree in the garden. Once they fully open the blue tits will start pulling at them, I don’t know if they get the fluff out of them to use in their nests or if they are eating insects on them?
I’m not sure what type of willow tree it is, I think it’s a wild type, one that floats in on a seed and grows, a bit like a buddlea Bush, we have them too. They sneak in, but the butterflies love them. Which reminds me, I need to prune the buddleas, you have to cut them back by two thirds before they start growing in the spring, so that’s a job to do. Spring is on the way! Gardening begins.
We just saw this butterfly on the buddlea in our garden. It was feeding on the nectar from the flowers of the bush I think.
It seems appropriate to have a name with wood in it as our garden is very woody now. I guess we will have to try and cut things back a bit because it’s very overgrown, but I’m glad we have made room for nature, and by planting trees we are helping reduce our carbon footprint.
I’m playing with Photodirector. This part of it is called ‘splash’.
You can outline an area and make the background black and white. Then I changed the hues in the app. The buddlea in our garden are a slightly more red colour. It’s also changed the green of the leaves slightly too.
I think people should play with different apps and learn how interesting they can make editing photos. Not just to enhance photos and airbrush them but to get creative and have fun.
Mallaband-Brown