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.
Swirl
Tag: Design
The Art and Craft
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.
Pots and lampshades..
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.
Necklace
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!
Patterning
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.
Butterfly
Sundays #bandofsketchers prompt was butterfly, moth or insect. I decided to do a symmetrical drawing of a butterfly using the Sketchbook app on my phone. Basically I haven’t seen many of them so far this year. So I preferred doing my own design rather than using an Internet image to work from. It’s definitely sketchy!
Teach more art
What would you change about modern society?
So many schools seem to concentrate on “worthwhile” subjects, Sciences, Mathematics, English. The old fashioned three R’s reading, ‘righting and ‘rithmeric…
But we need creative thought as well as producing drones that do productive work.
If you learnt technical drawing you could design cars, create architecture, produce blue prints for engineering. Yes it’s all at the press of a button now, AI does so much, but artistic ability can help with innovation and ingenuity.
Art helped our understanding of medicine, Leonardo DaVinci undertook studies of anatomy that were well before other medicine caught up. Look at his drawings of dissections to understand his fantastic knowledge.
Art is in advertising, illustration, magazines, books, clothing, wallpaper design, surface pattern, product design, ceramics. That worthless degree that our government might close down could be the next big digital game, the shape of rotor blades that save energy for planes or wind turbines. Even a more readable font for someone who is dyslexic.
So art really should be a big part of modern society. Without it there would be no fashion, no special effects for TV and film, no beautiful make up for theatre or other creative productions.
Life is not just bean counting, it’s about passion and beauty. Otherwise we might as well all be clones, in grey jumpsuits, working 9 hours a day, sleeping when we are told and not attempting to be any different than anyone else.
Patterned
Artrage drawing played with in Incollage and Instagram. You can do all sorts of things by playing with a digital image, you can make interesting patterns and skew and tilt images if you try. I have often done things like this quite frequently, but it’s a while since I’ve created something like this.
Idea for a semi abstract painting based on rain.
I have a small commission and I need to create something gentle based on the idea of rain. I’ve used the theme of raindrops and water running down glass as an idea. This was drawn in my Artrage app and it’s a digital finger painting. I will try and do the painting in metallic acrylic paint.
In two minds
A simple digital drawing using flood fill to fill in a sketch, then a line drawn over it to delineate the face and duplicated and flipped to create a collaged image. I like the freedom of digital abstraction.
