New paintings and regular art updates.
Every so often my Facebook page comes up with memories of older paintings. I think all of these were done in 2016. They were on display in Cinders Hub in Newcastle-under-Lyme and two of them sold. I still have the painting of the koi carp. I realise now that although I paint a wide range of images I do like repeating certain themes.
I love colour as you can see, and I also love pattern.
I was looking for an image to paint yesterday and found the oldest green man that has been found. I think it’s French, or what became France, as it said it was 1st or 2nd century. I painted it yesterday and it was in the craft fair although it didn’t sell. I think I will do a bit more work on it…. 
why? Because I think I’ve made it too green. Which is strange as its a green man….
The British Ceramic Biennial has some hands on workshops that are free and open to the public. Last week I made a flat back pot using a mold of a boat with Donald Trumps head in profile and a pair of boots walking in the other direction. There is also a lion with a union jack, a monkey, and other figures and plants. There are other pots shown above. Each of them has been designed by an artist, so they are possibly controversial, maybe a bit tongue in cheek.
Today I painted glaze on my pot that had been fired. I didn’t remember to take a photo of it, but I have taken photos of some of the larger pieces now they have finally been fired.
I’m glad I had a go, it’s definitely worth a visit.
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We went to the British Ceramic Biennial today, at the Spode Site in Stoke, to glaze a piece of pottery I made last week. The weather was very bad and we got soaked on the way into the exhibition. When we came out the rain had cleared up and the sun was out. I took some photos of the wet surfaces. It’s always good to notice changes caused by weather conditions and variations in lighting.
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Another start, luckily I don’t need a starter handle to get going. Something switches on in my head and I suddenly can’t stop. It’s weird, my mind must be wired up in a strange way.
Today I have started painting a lion, a car, ivy, a planet, a latch for a gate. All very random, but a challenge to myself. I have a little cartoon at my studio which says I will paint anything, and I think that’s true. I might not be able to get things exactly right but I do try.
I’m thinking about what to write or paint here. I will try and do a few more spooky stories when I’ve finished this lot of art work.
Toot toot, off I go!
I do like drawing and painting planets
This was drawn in ArtRage oils. I used the dry brush and metallic setting for it except for the moon where I turned the metallic option off. You can’t paint smoothly with it but you can get an impression of what you want to depict. The largest brush size is the size of the moons shadow, so to build up the background you have to shade backwards and forwards to cover the whole picture. This is glorified finger painting!
You will notice the top left corner is lighter than the bottom right. That is because the app is set up to have graduated shading across the picture. There is some difficulty drawing accurately on a screen with your finger, especially when the surface is apparently fluid. The result is the moon in the bottom right corner does not look quite right. The image is imagined, not taken from a photo. The moon is not identifiable but would be one of the four seen by Galileo. (the four biggest), (no I can’t remember their names!)
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I might be ill but I still need to paint.
This is called winter faces. I often paint images with faces in them. I think this one is because I used to walk in an avenue of trees in the park near where I lived. The trees seemed to each have a face, they were spooky but interesting at the same time.
I think I thought there were tree spirits, I hadn’t heard of ents or ent moots then! This is a 6 inch square acrylic on canvas. Solitary tree at sunset with stone lying snow.
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I always post my own art here, but the memory is getting full so I’ve been deleting a few images (ideally what I need to do is reduce my image sizes from Megabytes to Kilobytes , but I’d uploaded so many before I realised it was a problem. I could go in and change the images, but I post too much here. So I’ve deleted a lot of photos today. I hope it doesn’t spoil my writing too much.
Freedom is a tiny bird
That flutters down to your hand
Perches on an outstretched finger
Preens and sings and looks you in the eye.
Freedom cannot be held still
It has to live and grow.
To fly free
An Eagle in a tiny body-
Strong and graced with beauty.
Freedom is for all,
Freedom must survive.
I’ve got to get on and paint. I’ve been distracted recently. I’m going to get my paints and brushes out tomorrow.
This is a close up of my Holly and Ivy painting that I started a couple of weeks ago.
We live in a world where art can be worth millions or pence, where there is no set price for anything. If you buy a TV they generally are a certain amount of money. If you do a painting of a TV then it seems to depend on who painted it, how well known they are. Whether there is a resale value. It also seems to depend on scarcity and if the person is alive or dead when generally the art is worth more. It’s a funny old world.
Anyway all that said I think art is important and I will keep making it.
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Mallaband-Brown