Green

Posted on May 14, 2018 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Colour, Digital art, Earth, Green, PoetryLeave a comment

Green is the colour of air and growth, oxygen and life.

Without Green we have no breath. Our lungs are starved of 21 percent.

Photosynthesis brings life, gas, food, and clean water. Blue needs Green to make turquoise pools and seas.

The leaves of trees that clean pollution, algae that feed the oceans. Green is life, on hills and valleys, boughs that leap up to the sky.

Green if lost is death to Earth. Green men, green women, green children, without green we are gone. Without it we cannot exist. Hold green tight and keep it safe. or desert will replace us all.

I think this is a bit jumbled up. I dont know whether to use blank verse. I am a bit out if my depth but I want to try. X

Trees and views

Posted on May 6, 2018May 6, 2018 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Cheshire, Earth, Flowers, Garden, Photographs, Photos, Poetry, Shropshire, StaffordshireLeave a comment

Leaves unfurl and block the view, the sky is shaded out, green and orange, and yellow too, they cast their shade about.

Atop a hill, those huge trees grew, their roots spread wide no doubt, and round their branches… true delight I see the fields sprout.

Now came old autumn, when leaves flew, they were madly strewn about, the world is seen as if anew, and “slumber trees!” I shout.

I’m not good at rhyming. I prefer blank verse, but I thought I would have a go at making a more traditional poem.

“View” and “Out” are such simple words…you can probably think of far more rhymes for them than I can. The poem is based on a visit to the Dorothy Clive Garden today. The leaves are starting to fill in the gaps between the branches and twigs, and some views will disappear until the leaves fall again in October or November, when the world beyond them will be revealed again. I think you can see three counties, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Shropshire can be seen from the top of the quarry garden there.

It’s a beautiful place if you feel like visiting it.

Yesterdays Art

Posted on May 4, 2018 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Art, Design, Earth, Leaves, Painting, Potteries, Pottery, Spode, Stoke-on trent, Water5 Comments

Some paintings I have worked on and a Mini Mona Lisa. ..

The first four are recent paintings that I have worked on because I was not happy with them. Water and Earth are both part of a series (including Air and Fire) I also want to improve them.

Leaves was originally a single leaf but it was very simple and I wanted to add more to it. The leaves are from my imagination. I sometimes use art as a way of helping my memory. If I can remember what something looks like I can use the memory for other paintings and not necessarily use reference photos. I dont have a photographic memory but I sometimes describe an image to myself, like the way a gutter and drainpipe are attached to a house. If I can describe it I can draw or paint it.

Autumn pottery is based on a “pot bank” the kilns that were used for firing pottery in the past. Now they use gas tunnel kilns. The plants are roses and cotoneaster. They are to represent vegetation growing around old, derelict pot banks. The blue background could be sky, or the water from local canals.

The final painting was a quick copy of the Mona Lisa, taken from a very old book on anatomy for student artists. I know it is wrong, the face is too thin, the smile is wrong. But for half an hour’s work its not bad. It’s on a tiny canvas about 1 inch by 2 inches.

So there you are, more paintings, its something I do.

Tulips

Posted on May 2, 2018 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Design, Earth, Flowers, Photos, PoetryLeave a comment

Spring has finally sprung. Tulips are rising out of the earth following the refreshment of rain. Drinking in the water, their heads swelling and bursting into bright petals. Shimmering in the cold sunshine of early May.

The season’s are running behind the time here. Another cold and wet snap today, but hopefully better by the weekend.

I use the word hope a lot, I know, but thats how I feel. The colours of the tulips have raised my spirits. They photograph well and I have tried to create kaleidoscopic patterns from them.

Bright red juicy lips of deep red from a double tulip hold me enthralled. Playing with the image to make it more contrasted, deeper, more shape to it.

I love spring, the fresh green leaves not totally burst from their buds even now we are in May. I hope it does warm up. I need energy to do more art!

Found…2011 sketchbook

Posted on May 1, 2018May 1, 2018 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Doodle, Earth, Illustration, Lanscape, Pencil, Portraits, Sketches, Wales, Yorkshire1 Comment

I’m having a clear out/spring clean, and I found this sketchbook underneath a foot stool that isn’t used very often.

I always have to look in to see what I was doing, this was an orange book with nice thick cartridge paper, spiral bound so you can flip the pages and not end up trying to draw into the crease between them.

So I saw pictures of landscapes and some portraits.

I had clearly dated them so I know they were done over a couple of weeks in June 2011. I dont remember my health then, but I must have taken the week off from work and gone up to Yorkshire and also North Wales….

While these are black and white pencil sketches, I think they give enough detail so that you can understand the views I saw. I dont think they are that accurate, but I sometimes prefer drawing to photography. I have joined a group of urban sketchers, but I dont get out often enough these days.

The portraits are just about OK. I feel like they are all flawed in some way. Perhaps I had done them too rapidly ? I don’t think the fact that there is a drawing of a pint of beer in there is of too much importance. I must have been feeling in need of refreshment, the drawing by the river was at a pub in Saltaire and I think I drew the landscape while we stopped for lunch and a drink.

The sketch of the lighthouse is at Talacre beach in Wales. The figure at the top us actually a sculpture of a person. I dont think its safe to enter and in any case I think the door is locked.

I will keep this short. I dont want it to turn into one if those “slides of landscapes I took on holiday” moments!

I saw a Dragon, fly…..

Posted on April 27, 2018April 27, 2018 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Animals, Art, Earth, Insect, Painting, Poetry1 Comment

Ask me if I’m a poet and I will say no. It’s not something I do very often. I wrote some on Facebook a few years ago and then lost track of them. I suppose now I have more time that I’m trying to fill I can try to write…..

But it’s not Art! I hear gasps of fear, There is no paint, no sculpting hammer.

No blow to chip the detail from the infinite ages. Where is your paintbrush, do you care? To mold faces from thin air?

How do I draw a Dragon, head and tail…with words or crayon, clay or ink? I do not know, I cannot think.

But I will try to soar in flame, give sight to thought, or begin again.

Waiting for lightning

Posted on April 21, 2018April 21, 2018 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Earth, Lightening, Poetry, Rain, Thunder, Weather3 Comments

The forecast is for thunderstorms. ….

The heat has been here for only two or three days and already the forecast is for thunderstorms and then a drop of about 10 degrees Celsius.

Back to normal for April. Cooler, hopefully not too cold…

Looking at http://blitzortung.org you can track the lightening, an hour ago it was heading in this direction. Now it has tracked slightly east. The weather over the Channel looks bad, with lots if storms in north France.

I want to write a poem about waiting for the storm….

Here I am, on Earth I stand, waiting for power to flow, from sky, to ground, down ribbons of charge zagged into flash and sound.

I watch the signs, the sighs of air, deep rumbled groans of noise. There are now ways to see the moves of clouds and wind that pound.

But though I wait in stifling heat, no moisture hits the ground, the sky stays dark, not lit, not sharp. The storm has turned around.

No excitation of the land, no rivulets of rain, no exultation of the skies, no lightening strikes abound …….

Well, I think that explains how I feel. I have sat and watched lightening on many occasions, it is one of the things I love. To sit safe while the maelstrom whirls around the house. But like the photo of the clear sky above, nothing seems to be happening tonight.

Oh well there is a small meteor shower due this weekend so I might see something…..

Paintings for sale

Posted on January 18, 2018April 11, 2018 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Abstract, Animals, Art, Design, Earth, Landscape, Miniatures, Newcastle-under-LymeLeave a comment

IMG_20180130_131331_987

I have some of my tiny and mini paintings for sale at the Place to Be in Newcastle, Staffordshire.

Painted on small matchbox sized canvases, and some about 4 or 5 inches square. If you don’t have a wall to display pictures on you could choose something tiny and unique.

You will also be supporting the shop and the YMCA.

There are tiny paintings and the miniture paintings for sale.

Find them at The Place to Be, York place, off Merril Street, Newcastle-under-Lyme, ST5 2AH.

Facebook page @YMCANSThePlaceToBe .

I hope to produce more of these in the coming months.

I am also going to produce some greetings cards which will be for sale alongside them

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Earth