Old Oak and ice-cream

Posted on October 1, 2019October 1, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Design, Giant straw bee, Hollow Oak, Ice cream, Nantwich, Oak, Rain, Sculpture, Snugburys, WeatherLeave a comment

Visited Snugburys ice cream parlour near Nantwich today. I had the sugar free vanilla and a plain cone. It was weird, a bit like tiny frozen hailstones slightly moist, but bits kept dropping off! My hubby had Walnut and Maple syrup (me jealous?).

As we came out we had a look at one of the oak trees in the grounds. It was hollow inside. The tree looked healthy though. As a tree grows the outside bark and outer layers carry the nutrients and water up the trunk in tubes called phloem and xylem. The centre can be lost, but as long as fluids still flow and the outer wood is strong the tree will survive.

Finally we walked towards the giant bee they have built out of straw. It replaced the Peter Rabbit sculpture that was previously there. We didn’t go to close because it was raining and very windy. Took a quick photo. Enjoyable visit.

Drawing challenges

Posted on September 30, 2019September 30, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Challenges, Design, Drawing, Drawing diary, Fun, inktober, Life, One inch challenge, Pen and ink, Pencil2 Comments

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In October there are a few challenges to get you drawing. The first is Inktober. You can find various challenges based on this theme on the Internet. Each one is based on doing a drawing a day for the month of October. People use a hash tag, #Inktober2019 is this years I think. There are suggestion on what to draw, for instance halloween themes or autumn. These can also be found on line.

The second challenge is the one I may be doing. This is the one inch drawing challenge. You draw thirty one, one inch squares and do a tiny drawing a day. My only problem? I don’t know if I’ve got a ruler to draw the boxes!

Older paintings

Posted on September 30, 2019September 30, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Colour, Design, Fish, Hawk, Kestrel, Old paintings from 2016, Pattern, Tree spirits2 Comments

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.

A subject to paint

Posted on September 29, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Design, Green man, History, Life, Old, PaintingLeave a comment

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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…. IMG_20190928_222312_697 why? Because I think I’ve made it too green. Which is strange as its a green man….

Flat back pottery

Posted on September 27, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, British ceramic biennial, China Halls, Clay, Design, Fun, Life, Pottery, Spode site, Staffordshire, Stoke, Stoke-on trentLeave a comment

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.

Wet

Posted on September 27, 2019September 27, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged BCB, British ceramic biennial, Design, Photos, Rain, Water, WeatherLeave a comment

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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.

When I start I can’t stop….

Posted on September 25, 2019September 25, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Blogging, Car, Design, Fun, Humour, Painting4 Comments

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!

Drawing Jupiter

Posted on September 25, 2019September 25, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Artrage oils, Design, Digital drawing, Finger painting, Jupiter, Moon, Planet, Surface patternsLeave a comment

I do like drawing and painting planets Untitled60_003

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!)

Winter faces

Posted on September 24, 2019September 24, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Colour, Design, Landscape, Painting, Sunset, Tree spiritsLeave a comment

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.

Missing photos

Posted on September 24, 2019September 24, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Apologies, Design, Explaining, Illustrations, Mainly my own work, PicturesLeave a comment

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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.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Design