Wound up

How do you unwind after a demanding day?

You have to relax and unwind sometimes. But it can be difficult. Those that know me will understand that I use art to relax me. I draw or sketch. But the problem is that I can already be too wound up to begin drawing. Sometimes I will try and do some breathing exercises, six breaths in, hold for three, six out, hold for three. I do that for a few minutes to calm my breath. I learnt it from yoga class.

My worst situation for unwinding is when I go to bed. I suffer from various health issues and try various techniques to relax. Breathing, or trying to see a golden healing light when I close my eyes. The imagined light enters your head as you breathe in and descends to your feet, then as you breathe out it travels back up and out of your head. It’s hard to describe, but it sometimes works. Imagination is a good thing, learning to control thoughts. I’m hoping it might help my insomnia, even if it’s only a slight improvement….

Other times I just look at my phone. It’s really bad I know, but I go into my own little world and ignore the rest of it. I switch off my mind to my hubbys voice sometimes. I think its rude of me, but I feel cocooned and detached from worries. Maybe not the best thing to do.

The painting of the governor is an example of my work, where I spent hours painting it, concentrating until my hands and shoulders ached. Mentally unwound, but perhaps physically the opposite!

Reminded

I asked about ideas and my friend sent me this photo of an abstracted idea of Robin Hoods Bay in Yorkshire. It features stone block walls, terracotta tiles, blue sea and sky and a few seagulls. It’s only about 4 inches square on a little canvas. I used bright colours and strong lines to make it more graphic. There are strong outlines so it could almost be a jigsaw. It’s hard to find a balance between abstraction and realism. I stylised the smoke and the sparkles on the sea. The windows seem to float above the surface of the stone, and I’ve used white highlights to hold it together. I think it was a success.

Owlish

A small turquoise and blue painting of two owls I painted a few years ago. I want to do a few more like this, semi realistic but with a bit of quirkiness.

I’ve got a small craft table in June and I need to restock my paintings. I’ll post about the craft fair soon.

I’m asking for suggestions for small paintings, ideas for new pictures? These will be matchbox sized or slightly bigger. I need to do some paintings of bees on flowers. I painted giraffes against sunsets. I might add some metallic paint again.

I just want to get going. But I’m a bit blocked mentally at the moment. I look at me easle and think, tomorrow? But that begins tomorrow again…. Life is strange.

High school?

Describe something you learned in high school.

I did go to Sixth form at school, but it wasn’t a separate high school. I think things have changed in the UK since I was there. I guess different places in the world run their school systems differently and now Sixth form colleges are often stand alone institutions.

We didn’t have computers when I was at school, they were just coming in when I left. So that’s another thing I didn’t learn! There were typing classes (which I didn’t do) and I think the typewriters were pretty old!

So what did I learn? I did A Levels. One of them was Art, and I loved it. I started to learn about subjects like Pop Art and French Impressionism and Surrealism. It was good to actually learn about the history of art as well as finding out about different techniques. I learned about Andy Warhol and Monet, Cezanne and Salvador Dali. I remember pictures of Campbell soup cans, haystacks and melting clocks. I didn’t learn about female artists though, that came later when I went to college. The Art course made me decide I wanted to do an Art degree, and here I am still being an Artist all these years later.

Mural painting.

What job would you do for free?

One of my old murals. I would love to still be doing these and if I had enough money to live on I would volunteer to do things like this for free. Maybe in a children’s ward, or some landscapes for a community centre. I have actually done one or two for free as a volunteer in the past. My first was painting the scenery at my senior school a few decades ago. I wish I’d got photos of it.

My only problem is my health. I can’t move as well as I used to and my balance is not good. I sake a lot so I can’t paint as smooth a line as I did in the past. Age seems to be catching up with me. It’s frustrating because this is the sort of thing I love doing. I get great satisfaction from it. I cannot remember when I didn’t paint or draw. It has been my life when I’ve been able to do it.

Going to a new home

Autumn painting. A woman with a red umbrella walks through a damp and misty forest with leaves scattered around. I worked from a photo someone lent me so I don’t know who’s photo it was. If there is a copyright issue I will delete this post.

I had problems with the body length and the length of the legs, trying to get them and the arms in proportion. I had to play with the colours and shadows to try and get a realistic light on the figure. I also tried to make the trees bluer to send them back into the distance.

Delamere

Third painting. I used the reference photo less and added leaves on the left hand side that were further towards the centre than was on the original photo. The lady who lent me the photograph told me this was taken at Delamere forest, which I think is in Cheshire.

I tried to emphasise the blues in the background to give it a distant feeling. Then I emphasised the reds and greens to ring them to the fore. The leaf litter was fun to paint trying to shape it and add light shining through the leaves onto the ground. It’s a small acrylic on canvas.

Next Saturday

Orme Art Group is having a Spring Artisan sale. There’s going to be a variety of stalls, from wire weaving, soft furnishing and painting and prints. I hope to be demonstrating minature painting, and selling some of my mini works. I also have a few glass necklaces for sale.

I don’t do craft fairs very often anymore, I went off them when covid was (still is) about and I’ve had to pluck up courage to do it again. I like space around me, not crowds, but this will be with friends so I should be OK.

The Whitfield Centre is a community centre and the people there are very friendly. I hope visitors will be impressed by the variety of work for sale and I hope we get a good attendance.

Pastel drawing

Pastel drawing of sea, land and sky. Came up on my Facebook memories from four years ago. Where does the time go? It was one of the drawings I did during a pastel workshop a while ago. It was framed and has a mount over it so any loose pastel dust falls behind the mount and not in front of it. I think I’m going to take it over to a gallery where I have some work so I can try and sell it.

Three new?

Enjoyed starting a few paintings today at the Orme Art Group after turning up with no reference photos, I forget to take my phone and it has some flower photos I was going to use! Thanks to a lady called Steph for letting me borrow her pictures.

These are only daubed in… I will go over them and add details later. I started one little canvas but I didn’t want to muddy the colours so I started another picture, then another. I’m hoping these all have a feeling of atmosphere. I want them to look misty and damp.