I drew this this morning but hadn’t published it. I was just going through the reader section of WordPress and found someone else had done a very similar image. I did this digitally, playing with a drawing that I had been altering over the last couple of days. The other person’s art is four different female faces, using a totally different technique. It’s so interesting that artists come up with similar ideas from different beginnings. I like her style and work, good to see the creativity here!
Oh dear, I’m in a whirl again, lack of sleep isn’t helping. Someone was chatting with me today and yet again I found myself crying. When will I ever feel happy again?
It was raining this morning when I went out, so I decided not to wear a coat. Cool, damp, with a breeze, it was good to feel a little more comfortable. When I got home the fan went on, and that’s stirring the air up nicely. I’m going back out later, but for now I just had a nap (I must be getting old). The cat came and poddled away kneading my knees and then fell asleep too.
Shall I dream of life and loss again tonight? I don’t know. Its hard to control things when you sleep, then wake up in a tizz.
By the way the drawing on the right was based on the drawing on the left, just by sketching over it. I decided to turn it upside down to match my confused mood.
Another quick fingerpainting this time just in sketchbook app. You can vary the pens and brushes, there’s a large selection, but they are almost too numerous to work with. It’s hard sometimes to decide which to use. Thank heavens for the back button so I can delete what I don’t like. This started out as a quick sketch that I was drawing to show a friend how the app worked, but then I decided to finish it tonight.
Digital playtime again. I used the curved lines drawing as a basis for this. I had fun with textures and patterns. Finger painting in the Artrage app. Then I ran it through the photodirector app on my phone. I’m not sure who the face is x
The UK government changed the retirement age a few years ago. They bought in a sliding scale so that women cannot retire until they are 65 or above (it was 60), and men’s retirement age had gone up from 65 to I think 67?
What that does effects millions of women and men. I would have retired by now, I could have still worked, but it means I cannot get my state pension yet, even though I have been paying into all my working life. The result is that a lot of people will get less of an overall pension for what is left of their lives, and are more likely to die before they get it. That also means the government will get to keep more of it.
So? People were living longer until recently, but the age you die has actually reduced, especially with the drop in wages, and increases in poverty. Older people tend to struggle to pay bills or afford to heat their homes, and as they are more likely to have health issues their lives may be shortened.
One possibility though is that the governments decision might be overturned. The WASPI women (women born in the 1950’s who say they were not warned the retirement age was due to be raised), had a judicial review pending at the start of June. I haven’t heard the outcome, but maybe I can retire…. SOON.
Floating was today’s #bandofsketchers prompt. I have taken this idea of Canada geese floating on the canal from an abstract painting I did in 2020. I moved the geese around in this and left out the greenery from the original. I used felt pens and a silver pen to give a liquid glint.
Figures are hard to finger paint, the details are difficult to draw clearly. In this Artrage oils drawing I threw pretty much all the pen tools at it, including watercolour, spray paint, and an eraser pen. I’m not quite certain why it turned into an angel, I think I was just trying to fully fill the page. Again this experiment seems to say freedom is a good thing to try and work to…
An old digital drawing of Mona drawn on the old sketchfu site. I got the nose and the body way too long! I used the site tools which were circular pens of seven varying sizes, and an opacity/transparency setting to build up the colours. I think I did this about ten years ago on my old wacom tablet.
Thursdays #bandofsketchers prompt was holiday. Holiday? What’s that. We usually stay around Stoke because we don’t have many people to cat sit and holidays are too expensive. We do have days out. I tried to draw Jodrell Bank from memory, gave up and drew over it with a silver pen. Vaguely got the detail!
Mallaband-Brown 