New paintings and regular art updates.
Part of an illustration I’m working on for my college course. I have to fit four A6images I create into an A3 sheet. Having to work on dots per inch sizes, screen resolution… Relearning photoshop that I’d forgotten. Its getting there slowly.
There are other programmes I might investigate, like something called procreate… Hmm. Too many bells and whistles perhaps?
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Hubby went up the step ladder this afternoon and got some more delicious ripe cherries off the lower branches of the tree. The really bright red and dark red ones are too high up. A lot of the ones he got had peck marks in them and splits where they had started to burst their skins. I put about twenty or so on the bird table and then more bad ones in the bin when we came in. But it’s still a good haul. I’m thinking of doing another trifle…. Yum.
Now they are safe and washed and in the fridge, but they won’t last long…
Doing what we always do this time of year. Cram the back yard full of flowers. We have a big patch of land next to the house, but it’s full of trees and shrubs and fruit trees and a couple of small plastic greenhouses with tomatoes. But the back yard is visible from the kitchen and living room and I love a riot of colour. The baskets are mainly from a nursery, but some managed to survive the winter. My hubby even planted an iris in one of the baskets. We’ve put a couple of lilies in the far end so the cat can’t get near them (poisonous to cats).
They will grow and get blousier. It’s amazing that the brackets can hold three baskets in one go. Water the top one and the lower ones get watered too.
I will post more images as they grow.
Four faces on a black and white pattern I made on the phone. Each face was drawn by my finger on the screen. I definitely think I have a style that I draw in. Not anything recognisable like anime. Just my way of doing things. They say though, that there’s nothing new under the sun. So I wonder if there are any artists that do this kind of thing. Maybe it’s a bit too unfinished but you don’t learn unless you try different things.
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Don’t worry I said, I know where I’m going… We walked up one moorland fell and down into the valley of the next. Walking on tussock grass was hard on the legs, each lump was seperate from the next. The ground was springy with matted sphagnum moss as well.
The sun was getting lower in the sky. The path was hard to follow, and I was getting nervous. We hadn’t seen anyone in our travels and I could not see the road that led to our destination. Matt had parked his car next to a pub on the moorland road and we were heading vaguely west towards the setting sun.
It was then that Matt had the brilliant idea of looking at the map. He’d not bothered earlier, but now it was getting late and drinking time was running out. We all peered over the map, Matt muttered something as he looked over it. What did you say? I asked. Just follow the cat he laughed. There laid out in front of us was a dotted line, following the contours of the fells. Definitely cat shaped. And as I looked I could see the pub marked just where its up raised paw was swiping at the string, the line that indicated the road!
Matt laughed. We’ll be there in ten minutes. Cheers I said. Let’s go.
Last night we had fun trying to sing together as a group on Zoom. It was a laugh, we all tried to sing together but the delays on the line meant that most of the time we were badly out of sync with each other….
Then my cat jumped up and kept getting in the way. She was walking backwards and firwards in front on my camera, so I grabbed her for a couple of minutes, I must have looked like a Bond villan! My friend who was hosting the meeting, tried to play music for us to sing to, but we couldn’t here it. At one stage he had three screens and two mice and keyboards on the go trying to get it to work. I admired the effort as it was the first time he had tried to do it!
Next week we will have another go, but it might be best to mute everyone and just sing along with someone leading the choir. As it was we were too busy falling about laughing instead of trying to sing the tune. I’ve never heard Molly Malone sung like that except as a raucous chorus in a pub on a boozy night out. It was a fun night though with friends.
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Hubby often goes down to the pond at night to look at the fish and feed them. The pond is deep so you can’t see them easily in the daylight. He has got a few minnows and goldfish in there. But over the last couple of nights he’s disturbed a frog that plopped into the centre of the pond. Tonight when he went out two matching frogs were looking back at him from either side of the pool.
So I asked him which one he’d kissed?
Lol.
I posted this and other photos to my Instagram page and a friend commented that they looked like views out of an airplane window of the sea with islands in it.
I had concentrated on trying to see animals in the image. I can see a snarling bears head at the top left of this one for instance. But it reminded me of a holiday in Dorset one year. Driving up over the hills of the county, just before we dropped down towards Weymouth on the coast, the sky looked like mountainous islands with sea, bays and inlets running through them. I wish I’d been able to take a photo…
The sky had been a pale wash of pastel colours, the sun was setting, but because we were heading due south its glare was catching the sides of the clouds, they were lit up with gold on one side and greys on the other. The ‘sea’ was all pale pinks and blues. If we had not spent all day driving I would have pulled over. The image faded as we headed towards the caravan site, but it was the precursor of a lovely week away. Maybe I can find some old snaps of the places we visited.
I often look at cloudscapes and see landscapes.
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In February I was painting scenery and props for our local pantomime, Aladdin.
We were acting in front of about 140 people for four performances. One on Thursday and Friday, and a double performance including a matinee on Saturday. To think just a couple of weeks later we were in lockdown. I saw hundreds of people over those few days, and then no one for three months except on the way to and back from the shops.
I wish I could go back in time? Go back to a time where there was laughter. Fun, silly jokes, time to be with friends. Life was much less worrying then, despite global warming and pollution! I wonder what will happen when things return to normal if they do?
Photo taken by my friend who went for a walk with my hubby yesterday. The Trent and Mersey canal. Near Middleport pottery heading south west along the canal. He saw a group of swans swimming along the canal. There are apparently Carp, Roach and Pike in that section of the canal.
He actually walked thirteen miles! A half marathon. He’s feeling it today. I’m impressed and amazed. I’m afraid a mile is enough for me. I think I need to do more exercise and seeing the photos I’m jealous of the walk he did.
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Mallaband-Brown