New paintings and regular art updates.
This is a be painting, Autumn lady. I’ve been working on it most of the day. I’m not sure about the colours on the final picture, I’m going to have a think about it over night. I need to see how it looks in the daylight.
Anyway its an acrylic on canvas. This has taken about 7 or 8 hours so far
X
Actually green man, but I decided to see what he would look like in black and white.
I took the photograph at Salts Mill in Saltaire, Yorkshire, about 4 years ago.
Green men are found all around the country, representing the spirit of the fertile world? I guess so. This one was a design on a large gardinere in the Salts Mill complex. I think he is probably a Victorian design. There us something quite disconcerting about green leaves growing out of his mouth. It reminds me of when a was a child, when I was told if I ate apple pips an apple tree would grow inside me!
We also visited a green man shop in Pickering, in the north Yorkshire moors a few years before, and came home with a tiny green man and a plaque of a lady surrounded in sea shells and seaweed. I’m not sure exactly where it was, I think it was near the railway station, in the centre of the town, it may have closed by now.
I like painting green men and women, there is a succulent power in them, green and verdant.
This is a painting is my owl bag. I was looking for something to paint for a still life and decided to paint him.
I don’t know whooo made the bag, but he gets admiring glances all the time…whooo ever the designer was I thank you!
Acrylic on canvas about 6 inches square….
Owl is a hoot!
Imagine a website where you can only draw in a small oblong in portrait mode. Imagine you only have a thick and thin black pen and a thick and thin white eraser. Then imagine drawing complicated images with only these tools.
That’s Youdraw, I don’t go on it anymore because my old computer is defunct and my tablet does not let me use a proper stylus pen.
The images above are my drawings, taken from the site and then changed in Photoshop so that I could colour them.
I found it captivating to be able to use the site to draw so many ideas. The shape was better suited to portraiture, but you could fit landscapes in, abstract ideas, botanical images, anything black and white. Some of the artists there could draw incredibly detailed pictures, one person at least built up a huge interconnected picture of 100 images, maybe more.
If you go and have a look at Youdraw.com you can see what is there now. I’m not sure if its still taking images. The plan was to collect 500,000 drawings to publicise the population explosion on Earth.
Hopefully I will go back and draw there again one day.
X
Using the Layout app from Instagram, I created this surreal image using a photo of a local canal with a strange thin building projecting upwards from what appears to be a circular or oval pool, the water was so still it had a lovely reflection on it, and this has added to the final picture.
The building is the edge of an old, derelict, warehouse that stands like a cliff face next to the canal, in the past ware from the pottery would have been transported from the pottery, south and east to the Midlands or north and west to the coast at Liverpool or up to Manchester and beyond. In fact Stoke-on-Trent lies at the heart of the canal system, and was built around the coal, clay and water of this area. Manufacturing of pottery, steel making and coal mining was on a massive scale here. Industrial archaeology will reveal the landscape as an amazing historical treasure trove of creativity. Some of the buildings were lost to demolition and decay, many bottle ovens have gone. The rest have protection orders on them, but are not necessarily being maintained. Warehouses and factories are crumbling. It is sad that history is being lost.
With cuts in education it appears that arts subjects are getting lower take up’s these days.
Students have to do more “useful” subjects, like Maths, English and Sciences, plus probably a language. Then if they go on to college or university the temptation is to go for more academic courses, especially when a 3 year course is going to cost upward of 30 or 40 thousand pounds.
I went to a Polytechnic, many years ago now. I got a maintenance grant and didn’t have to get a loan (they didn’t exist then). The costs were paid for by taxation, which was higher in the past. This made sense because that money raised by the exchequer sustained the education system as well as other services such as the NHS.
Things gradually changed, governments changed, their ideas changed and the rules changed. Where once there were grants now there are loans, where once there were bursaries, now there are loans. You may not have to pay them back until you are over an earnings threshold. But student loans are at 6% interest per annum, when inflation is between 2% or 3%. In other words the loans are a form of future taxation. Only low level, but over the years it takes to get a good job that persons debt is due to spiral. Is it any wonder that Art subjects are being dropped….
But Art is important, if you look at the patterns on these dresses, the design of the dresses, even the frill on the lamp shade? Someone designed that….
Artists may not get paid much but they make the world more beautiful and interesting. Artists can be innovators…look at the art of Leonardo da Vinci, he not only drew and painted, but came up with designs for tanks and helicopters and planes. They were not built because the technology did not exist to make them, but the ideas were there.
Art and design can be done on computers nowadays, press a button? No you still have to have someone to draw out the designs. Without art the world would be a boring, grey, sad place.
So if you feel like doing art….do it!
Oh I do love swirling things about, colour, playing with shapes, to me this is fun. Like creating a painting, but digitally.
Subtle changes of colour and shading add depth, adding the alterations together give an idea of metamorphosis. All these can be created from a few apps.
I don’t know what digital art is out there, except for pictures created by David Hockney of digital portraits and the woods close to his home when he was living in Yorkshire a few years ago. I went to see them exhibited at Salts Mill in Saltaire, Yorkshire.
I think that digital art will progress and change. I look forward to seeing it.
This is a new footbridge at Rhyl. The bridge can lift up on both sides of the footpath so that boats can navigate the lower area of the river. The footbridge is at the west end of Rhyl just near the blue road bridge and next to Rhyl’s bike hub where you can hire bicycles.
On our visit the sun was shining, but it was quite windy. The river below looked quite muddy and because the river is tidal the water was rushing out towards the sea.
The structure is interesting, the footpath seperates around a central mast and you can see down to the hydraulic rams that can lift up the two halves of the bridge. I haven’t seen in operation but I imagine it looks spectacular.
Clematis, blousy and purple,
or tiny and pink.
Growing up walls,
Along fences, up high.
Clematis, bell flowers,
Fuzzy seedheads,
Growing round trees
Up to the sky.
Clematis, spring and summer flowering
Now monumental,
Grown with great love.
Makes me sigh.
Clematis, old friend,
Newly open flowers,
Grow bud and petal,
You give me joy
I’ve been doing digital drawings for over 10 years now, here are some from then. I can’t remember what platform I was using, but I think it may have been Sketchfu which is now defunct.
I was a moderator there for several years and it could be quite hard work sometimes. Trying to prevent people upsetting each other, banning trolls, and deleting rude or racist comments. I had to be very diplomatic. I was also moderating another site at the time, so it took up a lot of spare time.
Even so I drew thousands of drawings on both sites. I just can’t help drawing, and I’m very interested in all sorts of art styles.
I would like to find another site to draw at, drawing in apps is OK but you can’t spark off what other people are doing. The camaraderie of drawing with other artists, doing drawing challenges, and drawing to a theme is what I was really interested in.
I downloaded a lot if the drawings and if I can access some of them I will post more here.
Mallaband-Brown