New paintings and regular art updates.
The University fine art department is squeezed in behind terraced houses. I would find this interesting and attempt to paint it as the year progresses. To have a time lapse style series of paintings. I like the architecture and the jumble of gardens that are hemmed in by buildings. It would also be interesting to take drone pictures from above. Maybe they’ll let me in as an alumni if I ask nicely?
At the end of a sketch out artists do a throw down where we lay out all our drawings for each other to see. There are fourteen sketches here but I think there were more people attending than that.
There are lots of things to sketch at Keele, there is Keele Hall, various interesting buildings and different architectures. There are also a series of small lakes and an observatory which I once visited, but can’t remember where it is. The number of buildings on the campus has really increased in recent years. There is now a full blown science park there. It’s a long way from when it’s campus was the base for an old British comedy called a very peculiar practice. Based in the 1980’s.
I just wrote this reply to a local Councillor who has explained that a court case against the owner of a listed building in the city has been postponed again. The sections in brackets have been added later to explain the situation.
“Having seen the report on Midlands today (a local TV programme) about zero tolerance to owners that are letting the cities heritage deteriorate (including buildings being set on fire) I find this very disappointing. I’m also concerned about the councils proposal for Spode. (to partly demolish it and build a large amount of apartments on the site). I’ve put in an objection. The idea that places should be partly demolished goes against the cities heritage. Surely there could be sympathetic restoration like along the canal between Shelton and Etruria (two bottle ovens have been restored and incorporated into a housing scheme) or let places be rebuilt like at the black country museum? (a large industrial heritage museum in Dudley, West Midlands) Instead we get the headline of a twelve million pounds black hole in the city finances and the prospect of more cuts. Is this levelling up or just levelling the city? (levelling up is a bidding system where cities try and get funding for specific work granted by central government). I came here over forty years ago and the place just gets worse!”
It seems that industrial heritage is not wanted in thus country. We should use funds to restore buildings, but making sure they are carbon neutral, instead we seem obsessed with ‘growth’ despite the damage that can do in a world of dwindling resources.
Clouds and rooves by the sea.
Quick sketches can be useful to remind you of a view. You can think about weather and how rain falls from the clouds over the sea. The jumble of buildings with slanting rooves, hunkered down for an impending storm.
Sketching fast gives you the chance to record something that may be fast moving, capture motion, in fleeting minutes the whole thing has changed!
The day the urban sketchers challenge was to draw the sky, it was grey and cloudy! Instead of swirling or feathery clouds we got a grey duvet closing in the light. At one second while I was drawing the sun shone through, but while I tried to catch the orange colour on the edges of the clouds the gap had closed and all was grey again! I tried to make the best of the view by drawing the outbuilding next door and a bit of vegetation (privet bush).
So hopefully a bit more sun will shine tomorrow.
X
In my dream I’m in a city, buying a crumbling house, with many floors. It is so delapidated, chunks of rubble are falling from it.
The house is actually two houses one on top of the other. It is perched at the top of a vertical cliff, and bits of building keep falling off.
I don’t know why I’m having this dream. I’m not scared in it, the city seems recognisable as somewhere I know, the sun mainly shines, or the sun is setting. Sometimes I will be miles away and I have to walk back to the house, by convoluted paths.
All the buildings in the city are falling down, but they are like ruins, much more romantic than real buildings.
I want to work out why I’m dreaming this and I don’t understand is why it keeps recurring?
Sometimes seaside towns are all pastel colours, peaches and primrose yellows or burnt orange and duck egg blues. But sometimes only the frontages are painted, I guess because people don’t have the money to paint the backs, or the weather is generally too bad and it wipes the colour away, washes the walls and the sun bleaches the buildings.
I think I might paint the view but add bright colours? Or I could stick with a muted palette. I have a sketchbook and I’m armed with a marker pen. Will see how I feel in the morning.
X
Thus us the old Colliery building I was drawing on Saturday. It’s amazing that it is still standing, it reminds me of an old cathedral or castle…..a ruin of the future, which until a few decades ago supplied fuel for our homes and power stations.
Hopefully it will reopen as a museum to the hard work and skills of its former workers.
the old Colliery buildings
Mallaband-Brown