Designing tiles

I decided to make a drawing of a tree shape then played with it in various apps to change its colour and shape.

I love old fashioned Art Nouveau and Rennie Mackintosh designs from the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Also the Arts and Crafts movement. We have become so interested in glossy and sleek, modern, monochrome that we don’t seem to recognise that patterns can be exciting and interesting. You can do anything you want really.

X

Jewellery at Serendiparty

_20200214_170848

I’m really pleased that I’ve got some of my glass necklaces in the new art shop in Campbell Place, Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent. It’s called Serendiparty and it’s run by a really kind person called Phil.

He has lots of artists work on display as well as his own as he is an artist himself. He does art that is created from plastic, and he is working against plastic pollution in the world.

Stoke has various creative people working in the town, including BArts, Acava Studios at Spode, Market@48 and Majestic studios. It’s good to welcome more creativity into the town. He’s going to be holding creative workshops at Serendiparty. With Staffordshire University having Fine Art and creative courses, I think this is a good add to the mix.

Looking forward to seeing what goes on there.

X

(ps on WordPress reader there is a picture of some food on this post, I hit the wrong button and somehow its showing the wrong image)

Teapot at the potbank..

FB_IMG_1581620772970

Photo my friend took on February 2018, I think it was up until 2019. Its also been exhibited at the Waiting Room Gallery. I liked doing these pottery ‘portraits’, but they are imagined, using pottery patterns and marrying them up with teapots or plates or bowls etc. It’s also about creating imagined backgrounds.

Acrylic on canvas, created, 2018, for sale…

Today I have been painting…

DSC_2389

Papier mache rock, for the pantomime. It is covered in newspaper and was painted with white emulsion. As I painted it the undercoat of white kept flaking off. I’ve painted it to look like the top is catching a ray of sunlight and the base is in shadow.

While I was doing this I also painted a flattened figure of one of  the policemen in the panto. He has been through a mangle and has been squashed flat. I had to do both sides but I didn’t do each side the same so I might have to repaint the back. Finally I painted clothes on a pretend washing machine. The door opens and a policeman climbs in. Then a child comes out in similar clothes, as if he has shrunk!

Anyway four hours of tiring but fun painting. It’s coming together x

Painting mugs

At Etruria Artists today we painted mugs, they were blank white mugs and we used on glaze paints that stay the same colour when they are heated. The most exciting thing is that they can be heated in an ordinary domestic oven. They have to be dried for twenty four hours, then heated at 150°C or gas mark 2 for 35 minutes to bake the colours in.

The outside photo is lock 40 on the Trent and Mersey canal. It was a beautiful morning, bright and sunny. I really do prefer coming to Etruria Artists ‘hands on Art’ at the Warehouse next to the lock in the morning rather than the evening. It is on from 10am to 12 noon if anyone wants to come along.

X

Necklace

I thought I would post an old picture of one of my necklaces from my Facebook memories. I made the glass cabochon at a glass workshop with someone called Angela Ashton. She has moved away and I would like to find somewhere else to do this. The wire weaving is by my friend, I need to chase her to try and get some pieces back off her, but I’ve been preoccupied and keep forgetting to contact her. I don’t think it’s anything to do with my age, but when you are busy with other responsibilities it’s hard to keep on track.

Sometimes I just wish for freedom to be myself, and sometimes I feel I’m using it as an excuse not to do things.

Maybe I can pull things back together soon. I need to escape my cocoon and be a butterfly.

X

Shattered

DSC_2389

I’m only showing you a bit of sky and some rocks I painted today as the scenery for the panto is secret. Basically I painted a desert. I had help with the sky (the black is a short curtain above the scenery). I’m too short to reach the top of the scenery. I am absolutely shattered now. 2.30pm to 6pm!i know I paint fast but that’s ridiculous….. About ten foot tall by 30 to 40 foot wide. I will publish the full image when the pantomime is over. Its thin acrylic paint on flat boards.

Penkhull Mystery Plays

The time to organise this year’s mystery play at penkhull is here. But people need to get involved. After fifteen years of hard work some of the organisers are standing down. We have various deadlines and need to decide by early February whether it’s going ahead. The committee are meeting tonight and hopefully those that were involved and are involved or might want to be involved will attend. It takes a lot of effort from over 400 people to put the day on. The centre of it is usually a Mystery Play although a couple of years ago we had a ‘fallow’ year where there was no play, but the rest of the day went ahead. I guess people are busy, but it would be good to keep it going….

One of those days.

sketch-1575999245319

Grey and depressing, icy cold, big droplets of rain. Disappointing as well, I keep trying to get the car mended (someone broke my wing mirror, the glass is cracked, and someone must have reversed into my nearside wing, it’s all scraped and dented. But I rang up, and the mechanic, who is trying to find the right mirror rang in sick this morning. I will have to try again tomorrow. Then I collected some paintings from my studio to try and get into a local craft centre. But the owner has been inundated with local artists. He is interested in more work but needs to sell some art first. He has had people in but one comment he got was “is it really That much?” for one if the pieces in there. It’s the usual thing in this area, people don’t have money, or if they do they don’t want to spend it. It’s depressing (oh I’ve already said that)……