Snow on snow

I love snow, and the music and poetry about it.

I love the poem turned into a carol which is “in the bleak mid winter”. Written by Christina Rossetti, the wife of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Snow is beautiful, in its hexagonal form, with amazing patterns that scintilate in the sunlight. There is also powder snow which I think is drier and forms in colder temperatures. I think there are other types but I’m not sure what they are like.

I’m no expert, I don’t know enough about snow. I do know it forms layers on mountains and hills and there are places in the snow that can form weak points so a horizontal layer of snow can slip and cause a massive avalanche.

The colours of snow can also be surprising. Shadows in snow can be very blue.  Look at paintings of snow and you will see beautiful renditions of it. I would like to be able to paint something like that.

Well this is not as interesting as I would like…..but it’s late  I might write a bit more later…

Cat stares

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You know that look cats have. That long slow stare, then a shift to look away at something else. Perhaps a twitch of an ear. Paws tucked up underneath. Then a sudden decision, movement, a lick of the paw. Settle again. Warm body resting on my knee. Curled up now, but if I move an eye opens and he stares again. Measuring minutes and hours, quietly, steadily…. I always miss his blink, to me his eyes are eternally open, then closed, but open…..

Scarf design

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Playing with pattern again, I created this digital drawing of what could be a paisley patterned scarf.

I like the idea of an intensely coloured swirl at the center and a red border. But the outer edges would be black so it would appear to be floating in space, in fact if I added a few tiny dots it would look even more like that.

The simple power of computers is amazing. People have such creativity at their fingertips.

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Learning

Instead of just finger drawing in an app I’m trying to get a more realistic portrait using a Sketch app and a stylus . I am finding that using the stylus stops the slipping that makes more irregular lines that happens when I try to draw with my finger alone.

The drawing is being made up from the airbrush tool and I’m changing the thickness and opacity depending on the thickness of the lines I want to draw.

It’s again a work in progress so we will see how it turns out.