New paintings and regular art updates.
Instead of an easle I prop a stand up in a chair. But sometimes it becomes a bit of a dumping ground. Empty mug, started to colour a canvas, pallette, brushes and tissues and a mug for water. Sketchbook with a zebra Dragon idea. I need to start painting but I have no get up and go. Tidy up and start, or worry and prevaricate. I don’t know. I need to do something soon. Maybe it’s these dark days that are getting to me? I need my mojo back….
I added my easle yesterday. Today I’m showing you my easle two years ago, I did a painting of Etruria Flint Mill. It’s also called Jessie Shirley’s Bone and Flint mill I think? It’s the only working Steam driven Flint mill in the country and the flints and bone were crushed and ground using the power of the steam driven beam engine there.
The buildings are part of Etruria Industrial Museum, a complex of cafe, the museum displays, and the Flint mill on the Trent and Mersey and Cauldon Canals at Etruria, Stoke on Trent. I’m not sure of its opening times. But once a month it used to be fired up and you could watch the fly wheel rotating round and the pans where the flints were ground rumbling as the engine turns them. Its amazing to see the industrial archeology of the potteries in action.
Our college exhibition in 1978, a few of us got in the local paper. One image was painted in quink ink on paper and the other one was larger on a canvas. I don’t remember what happened to them. I may have left them at the school of art. Even now I still remember the fun I had painting them. I wish I could go back in time to those days again. I don’t know if they still sell quink ink. When you added water to the black colour it would split into browns and blues. Great for painting cloudy skies
X
Eight tiny and four small canvases waiting to be painted. Despite my shaking arm getting worse, and my right hand starting to shake too. Life has to go on.
I’ve been asked if I want a small table at a craft fair, and I said yes (foolishly). Now I’m faced with these blank canvases. I have an idea for some images, I just hope they turn out OK. The trouble is I’ve put this off for weeks and the fair is tomorrow. Luckily I have some old paintings waiting at my studio so I should be OK. I just need a bit of courage. X
Well, I’ve finally got back to my studio at spode! I started a small painting of a bottle oven, I think it’s going to have a Van Gogh style sky. I need to start getting some work done for a possible exhibition later in the year. I want to do work about the area, but with a bit of a twist. This is a canvas about two foot by eight inches? It will be acrylic on canvas once I’ve painted in the mortar for the brick work I will add colourful bricks. The sky will swirl with clouds and stars and there may be vegitation or a bit of foliage.
Where I live,
Who I am,
What I do,
How I think,
Where I work,
My companion,
What I trained as,
My books,
My life,
My I.
My me!
A year ago I was painting this owl. I was working towards a couple of craft fairs, including one at Endon Well dressing. Now things are quiet and I just don’t have the motivation to paint, although I am doing drawings every day. I just can’t be bothered to faff about getting my paints out and I need some canvases, I shall have to buy some more.
Mid way through our thirty day challenge in Urban Sketchers Stoke-on-Trent. The subject was ‘taking stock’.
In front of me on the floor is a lovely carrier my friend sent me for Christmas. Its covered in decoupage pictures of me and my friend from years ago, and little cartoons drawn on top of the photos. The box contains all by little bottles of metallic acrylic paints, gold, silver, copper and bronze, but also metallic red, blue, green and brown. There is something nice about adding a bit of sparkle. In it too are packets of brushes, cheap but strong. Finally I have four or five tiny canvases on easle. They were going to be the centerpiece of my craft stall this spring. Instead they lie their forlorn, still wrapped in plastic, waiting for me to find inspiration in these bleak times.
I must paint and keep busy. But all my time is taken up by social media!
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Me at 18.
I have no idea where there paintings are now, but thus was me at 18. My work was part of a group exhibition for my foundation course in Art. Why did I have curly hair?
I think the picture I was holding was in watercolour or black quink ink? The top picture is my mirrored image, with desks in the background. I don’t have the article any more, it’s got lost in the mists of time. I posted this somewhere on line and kept a copy of it. I can’t say the exact date it was taken… How I wish I could go back to those days!
Well, they are a bit random, but I think I’ve done enough to these. Added some highlights and shadows then silver and bronze colours. The first is now called puddle, like a stone dropped into water, the second is simply called autumn leaves. I might do some others like this but it’s knowing what to do and how to use the modelling medium.
Mallaband-Brown