New paintings and regular art updates.
One of my favourite paintings, Jupiter Blue is based on a photo of Jupiters South pole if I remember correctly. The photo was taken by the Juno probe a few years ago. Astronomers were astounded by the colour of the gas giants clouded atmosphere.
I found it incredibly difficult to paint. It was so hard to get the softness of the clouds and I still think I can see a birds head or a witchy face in the painting. It’s acrylic on canvas large painting.
I love piled up clouds, dark and threatening, but with bright white patches, and blue sky (enough to make a sailors britches). You know a heavy shower is on the way, but it won’t last long, and the sun will be shining again.
When I used to walk to school I would chase the shadows of clouds. They would drift along the pavement like lapping waves. I don’t seem to see them any more? Maybe their edges are too fluffy. Or they don’t scud past anymore? Has the, weather changed in the last fifty years…?
I love clouds so when I saw these on Saturday I had to take a photo. I loved that they were lined up diagonally. I think they are cumulusclouds. I ought to check the cloud appreciation society page on Facebook but I thought I’d post it here first. November is near and grey skies abound, so it was good to see a little daylight for a change.
Spanning the Cauldon Arm of the Trent and Mersey canal. This white painted metal bridge arcs over the canal near the Etruria Industrial museum. The steps are metal too so when people walk over it their steps ring metallicaly.
The other side is a car park on Kilndown Close. This is where Canada geese used to congregate, but netting has been tied to the fencing to keep them off (possibly because of bird flu?). They still swim on the canal.
Notice the sky? It was blue with puffy white clouds floating in it. Today was the best day we have had for a while. There was even a hint of heat from the sunshine despite a strong wind that was rippling the surface of the canal. Lovely bridge, lovely day.
Surreal image just created by mirroring a photo of an ariel in front of a cloud. The angles of the ariels make them look like they are floating or flying. I’ve seen other people’s photos years ago doing a similar process. The images they created looked like strange insects, with wing cases apparently made of windows and antenna from TV ariels. It’s fun to create odd images like this.
There is a website called blitzortung.org you can open up, and if you look at the live maps you can see lightning strikes as they happen. The site covers the whole world but you can zoom in on it.
Tonight it got very dark and cloudy and we had a few flashes of lightning with rumbles of thunder about 5 to 3 miles away (10 and 6 seconds), Light travels fast, sound follows, so 2 seconds equals a mile away.
We just had some heavyish rain but the storm petered out. Looking at the lightning map, the storm split up into two. The storm stopped about three miles away from here
, but a branch of it was heading towards Crewe. There were over 5 thousand strikes in an hour!
I’ve been interested about lightening since I was talking to an elderly lady about 25 years ago. She said she was in her house several years before that. She had the window open because it was so hot, suddenly a ball of lightening came in through the window and bounced off the floor. She didn’t explain what happened afterwards, whether it just dissipated. But clearly it was not too traumatic. I have heard of ball lightning, so it might have been true….
The #bandofsketchers prompt today was weather. I want it to rain. I painted silver clouds, then drew over it with felt pen to try and create a bright cloudy looking landscape with rainshowers.
Clouds boil up
Heated by the sun
Moisture trapped
As water vapour
A bag of wet air?
Not quite
Cirrus and Cumulus
Acclimatise
Clouds
Climactic
Rainbows after storms
Lightning flashes
Trees thrashed
By the wind
Finally a breeze…
What’s something most people don’t understand?
Clouds and fractals
Fjords and lightning strikes
The Mandelbrot set
Strange attractors
Entangled Electrons
Quantum Mechanics
Heisenbergs Uncertainty
These are a few things
I don’t understand!
But I’d like to try….
Those clouds aren’t real!
Not cirrus or cumulus
Not lenticular or mackerel
You played with the photo
Didn’t you?
Messing about with the sky
Those clouds up high
Could be on Jupiter
Or Mars!
But not here!
Get that clear!
Mallaband-Brown