New paintings and regular art updates.
I drew some curves and spirals then started adding doodles, including a couple of birds and a face. I started using a fine line black ink pen, but it was running out so I turned instead to a black calligraphy pen. When I’d finished I decided to add colour. That helped accentuate some of the shapes. I could do more but decided to leave it. I called it phoenix because a bird seemed to ge appearing from the background.
Doing my usual trick of multiplying photos makes these abstract patterns. I love the spectacular autumn colours. Ot as brash and gaudy as the trees over in the USA. I like the subtlety of our trees. Perhaps we don’t have the right climate conditions to bring out very bright colours except in Acers, or maybe we have different trees? Anyway I hope you enjoy these fun patterns.
I just drew this, it started to get dark but it’s our little acer tree under the Walnut tree, also willow branches, Holly and buddlea.. The view is out of our side window at the top of the stairs. The acer turns deep red and orange and the walnut is starting to go yellow. The Holly is deep green but by the time I got to it, it was going really dark so that part was drawn even more quickly than the rest. This was for our #bandofsketchers prompt today ‘autumn’ the buddlea was also quickly sketched.
Walking around my neighbourhood. The first walk I’ve been out on in four weeks. I took many photos and decided to turn them into a montage of colours and shapes. Trees are hard to capture in art and the many shapes can be seen here. I may use one or two of these photos to base paintings on.
I managed to walk about three miles, including our steep hill, I’m absolutely shattered but I still went upstairs and drew for an hour. More of that in my next post….
Nasturtium with varigated leaves and other plants that are in front of the house. The only problem is the litter that blows about outside. Now I wear gloves or pick it up in a plastic bag to dispose of it.
Today I saw several discarded marks just lying on the pavement mixed with the fallen leaves. How horrible that people won’t take care of the place they live in. I hate the way they take no responsibility for their environment.
Our plants out the front are doing well although I’ve seen people through the front window, stopping when walking their dogs, no doubt to pee on the plants! Still I’m glad we grow them…
It’s mid October and the baskets just keep flowering. This ones on the garden shed, another sheltered spot. I would recommend ordering them from a small nursery or farm, they generally end up filled with more and different flowers that have matured more by the time you get them. I usually ask for lots of colour and the lady that plants them up will put in lobelia, begonias, fushias, trailing petunias, and other flowers I can’t remember the names of. Then we fill our own baskets with pelagoniums, small sunflowers and trailing tomato plants (this year). I hang baskets one below another. Then set up pots on the wall and the ground. Finally we’ve grown a few, like this one, on the shed. Those have had nasturtium seeds put in them and have given a lovely late flowering display. In all the sadness of this year they have given me great joy.
I went to a Batik workshop about three years ago when I first got my studio at Spode. I’d never done it before, but basically we used hot liquid wax as a resist to dyes. When you paint coloured dyes over the pattern you make, the colours are not absorbed into the cloth or canvas where the wax had been painted. Then you have to het a hot iron and paper and iron the wax out with the paper between the cloth and the iron so the wax gets absorbed into the paper. There is probably a clearer way of explaining, but as I say I only went to one workshop. My friend made this heavy frame for the yin yang cats. There is glass in it to protect the fabric. I was rather pleased with the result.
This is a thing now. I had a sketchy picture of my hubby done on black paper. I’d used pastels to do the drawing back in September, but after playing with nail varnish to draw a landscape view, I decided to use them on the drawing. It certainly had an interesting effect. It’s shiny and the colours change depending on where the light bounces off. I finished it off with adding a few lines with a silver marker pen. It reminds me of oil on water.
Despite the cold, wet weather the flowers in the back yard continue to survive. If we get any bad frosts I think they will go, but the sheer number of them packed together offer shelter to all of them.
So pleased we had the hanging baskets filled by a little farm nursery back in May/June, they have certainly been worth the initial cost. I go outside and am immediately cheered.
Orme arts autumn challenge. We agreed to attempt to reproduce a Picasso weeping woman painting. We did one or two panels each. I drew the top and bottom middle pages. The top on was mainly marker pens, but I could not get the purple colour so I used a mixture of white, blue and magenta to try and get it. Not right though. I also did the bottom middle panel. In that case I used watercolour paints then a black marker pen over the top.
Even though a number of artists put this together I think there is a good coherence and the squares are well matched. I’m pleased with the result.
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