New paintings and regular art updates.
I started drawing circles, then decided to run it through several iterations of photodirector using it’s AI style button and adding a background of butterflies, then sending it through the AI texturiser again. I think it makes a quite gentle image, I like the colours, enhanced in the Clarendon Instagram filter. I do enjoy experimenting.
My attempt at wax resist printing that I did with the brilliant Belinda Latimer a few years ago. I enjoyed trying to do Batik in her workshop, creating layers of colour. I also did a print of a couple of fish that I called Pisces had framed in a deep wooden frame. Another example of my experimental art practice.
On beach holidays I draw seahorses like this on the sand. I will use a stick to draw it out and sometimes use pebbles to decorate it. These drawings are ephemeral, disappearing on the high tide, tracked over by footsteps, lost in windblown sand. Seahorse is a half horse, half fish. I just draw, them for fun.
Thursdays #bandofsketchers prompt was train. Train design, didn’t look at an image, just channelling a screen print idea. The Green light is on the front of an American style train with a snow plow sort of thing. Obviously based on steam trains. Maybe in a transport museum? Artrage app drawing.
Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.
A few years ago I met a fused glass artist who showed me how to work with glass to create jewellery, bowls and other hand made craft pieces. A friend of mine helped mount the glass with wire weaving.
I wish I had learnt more about it so I could experiment more with glass. This piece was made with dichroic glass which gives it a metallic sheen. I made it into a pendant.
The trouble is that I can’t afford my own kiln so I’m limited in making things at workshops. The original glass artist moved away and it took a while to find another one, I’ve been to a couple of workshops with her and really enjoyed it.
I’m interested in doing other crafts too, like ceramics, but again there is a lot of cost involved. But I am a bit of a jack of all trades (master of none?)
I could have chosen a much more important subject to show how I have learnt from experience, but I’m not in the mood to consider a serious subject today.
The joy of creating a pattern. Layering with different Artrage tools. Playing with a roller, a spray paint tool, and other tools. Also the metallic and non metallic sliders. I tried to give the impression of spinning waves.
What do you love about where you live?
Stoke-on-Trent is a city built on Art and crafts. From Wedgwood and Brindley and the industrial revolution.
Ceramics were the main manufactured goods in the city. So much so that it became known as ‘the Potteries’. Different pottery owners experimenting with different materials, trying to make pots that could stand up to the quality of Chinese wares.
Manufacturers had water, clay and coal from the local area. Pots were transported out of the city on the newly built canals that linked it to the rest of England and then on to the world.
Designs were transfer printed onto plates and cups, opening up cheaper wares to the general public. But other work was hand painted and lined with gold and other precious metals.
What was needed to make all the pottery? Workers, making, turning, transfer printing, painting. Numerous jobs including the famous Saggar Makers bottom knocker. (You can Google this). The work couldn’t be completed without skilled labour that could translate designs into reality. Some female paintresses were allowed to sign their names to their work. Like Susie Cooper and Clarice Cliffe.
So much skill in one city. Burslem school of art taught many of the artists that were to work in the ceramic trades. One famous artist, Arthur Berry, became a fine artist and writer and play writer. He was one of my tutors at college. That’s why I love this place.
Shapes on the cat tree and next to it. Suddenly becoming more interesting with the silhouettes and pale flowers outside. Almost like a solarized photo. I like the way some of the shapes have a darkened edge ariubd them. Quite abstract.
I’m pleased to say one of my necklaces, made of dichroic fused glass has gone to a good home. Fused glass is a way of heating and melting various colours of glass together to make a unique pendant.
I made these a few years ago, I haven’t really pushed the sale of them as I’m concentrating on my paintings, but every so often I get them out and today I gifted one to a friend who kindly helped me out.
I will try and sell the rest of them this year. It’s about time they all found new homes!
Symmetrical doodle, could be a vase? I love pattern, I found the flood fill on my sketchbook app, using gradient and radial fills. I can’t work out how to change it from black, grey and white. But I think it sort of works? I was trying for a picassoish line effect although there are no bits of anatomy from animals and humans like his abstracts have.
Mallaband-Brown