Singing!

I went to sing with Loud Mouth Women tonight. It felt like I’d never been away. Numbers of attendees were down. I think a lot of people have got the cold that is going round. I’m glad I went. We are starting to learn Christmas songs that we will sing at a small performance in a few weeks. Old songs just come back into my head. You don’t know how they go, and then suddenly the music and words pop into your head! We sang a combination song of English, Hindi, French, Hebrew and Latin tonight! It was 2019 when I last sang it but I still sort of remember it. I was listening to a science programme on the radio on the way home and it said that people can still recall the languages they learnt at school even if decades have passed. It’s because those memories are in a stable area of the brain. It was on a show called All In The Mind on BBC radio 4. It might be on BBC Sounds.

Winter ideas

An old drawing I did of the local church one Christmas. It’s coming up to that time if year to decide what paintings to do for Christmas. I don’t want to make them too twee. They have to be something someone would want to hang on a wall. I half want to paint little icon paintings, or maybe images taken from something like the book of Kells. It’s hard to decide, do Robins work? Or are they just things you find on a Christmas card that get brought out once a year? Who knows?

Penkhull midnight

An old biro/ digital drawing I did a few years ago of our local church. I think I intended to use it as a christmas card (its several years ago but i think I did print a few off). I can see from it that I drew it out in biro first, but then must have scanned it into photoshop because I can see areas where it seems to have had some flood fill colour. I don’t know if I intended it to have white areas as snow or reflected starlight. I was watching a programme about astronomy last night. It said that a star will become a supernova once a century on average in our galaxy, but there have been none in the Milky Way since the Seventeenth century. Our closest candidate is Betelguese in the constellation Orion. It is a red giant star and sits on the top left hand side of the constellation. It has been dimming recently, which may mean it is shrinking. It might as they said, not explode for a million years, or it might become a Supernova tomorrow. No one can tell. But when it does it will be a very bright object in the sky. It might even look like this.

Boxes

#bandofsketchers prompt today is box.. I drew a couple of boxes. The slatted one at the back is one I keep art equipment in, the other one with the Christmas decorations on top contained the Teddy bear and other presents from my sister. I didn’t realise it had this nice lid until I took the things out of the box. Metallic felt pens and black ink fine line pen.

Mince pies and stollen

It was just me and my hubby together for Christmas, but that means no pressure to get all the trimmings done! I haven’t made a trifle yet, I will probably do so for New year’s day. We had a £3.80 chicken for our Christmas Dinner (a medium turkey crown in sainsburys was £27.90!) We had a few beers and I made pigs in blankets to go with the chicken. I also roasted all the veg including the sprouts. There are plenty of left overs for sandwiches today and I don’t have to think about turning a turkey into a stew and a curry later in the week. The one thing I miss though was having a party with my sister, but I’d rather make sure we are all safe.

An angel

One of my first digital drawings. I think I used a paintshop program. The angel was drawn in bright colours. With blue and purple wings. She places a star in the shape of a snowflake on top of a Christmas tree. I think when I created this I was just learning to draw with a mouse and gaining control of it. It was challenging but fun.

Seasons greetings to all my friends. X

Teddy bear

He’s a lone Teddy bear looking for a home. Green jumper with shamrocks on it, sitting forlornly on the chair. What’s he doing here? Don’t worry about him, he’s actually a present to me! I think he will be happy here. He has Ireland on his jumper so he’s come across the sea. He came in a box, shut in a small place, but now he’s released, free to roam about the house. I think he will sit with my other two bears, upstairs in our bedroom. I don’t know if he will have adventures but he can gossip with his fellow bears up there!