Man-cave

Posted on April 23, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #uskstoke, Challenge, Day 5, Drawing, Fun, Humour, Life, Lockdown, Man cave, Mess, Pasting tables, Shed, Sketching, Toy trains, Train, Urban SketchersLeave a comment

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Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent day 5, draw inside your shed or garage.

Where do I start. In my case our shed has had all the tools expelled to the outer darkness of our little shed. Instead some rickety pasting tables have been put up. The tops are covered with boxes, lengths of train track, bits of trains, engines, train trucks, stuff…. Plus he’s got different controllers to send power through the tracks. The pasting tables are so warped it’s like the trains are running through hills!

Then he’s got his bike bits, wheels, and a box that the stray cat sleeps in, which is surrounded with bags of straw… I’m allowed in as long as I don’t mess with anything… In the meantime he wants to upgrade things when the lockdown is over. We are going to buy some better tables. Exciting eh?

Fairy drawing

Posted on April 23, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Design, Drawing, Fairy, Fun, Life, Sketch, Sketching, Wire fairyLeave a comment

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I drew this last night. I interpreted my wire fairy as a real one (with embellishments). I wanted to get the picture to look like one of those adult colouring books. I drew the outlines first with a thin black pen, then I shaded it in with spectrum noir coloured metallic pencil crayons. I finally outlined the fairy with a slightly thicker and darker black ink pen. Drawn in a Windsor and Newton heavy weight case bound sketchbook. A5 size.

Day four of the new challenge.

Posted on April 22, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged #uskstoke, Art, Breakfast, Challenge, Drawing, Food, Fun, Sketching, Urban sketchers Stoke on trentLeave a comment

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Today’s challenge was breakfast. Unfortunately I’m setting the challenges and I didn’t get up till almost noon! When I finally did break my fast it was two pm. Apologies to any vegetarians out there. But I’ve got to say bacon butties really taste nice when you are hungry.

My drawing was with a black felt pen, then coloured in with blue, red, brown, yellow, green and purple felt pens. The USK challenge is getting a few participants, its enjoyable to draw every day and having set themes makes you think!

Finished fairy in the garden..

Posted on April 21, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Drawing, Fairy, Fun, Garden, Laurel bush, Photo, Plant, Sculpture, Sketch, Wire fairy2 Comments

I finished the wire fairy about three am, fighting to get the wings attached and in the right place. I gave her a long ponytail that looks like it’s blowing in a gale.

This afternoon she was attached to our laurel bush outside. She is hung on a nail, not very graceful but it works. I tried drawing her. All those curls of wire are difficult to draw. I didn’t want to be too precise. I think the drawing is quite spooky.

Digital drawing, Picard.

Posted on April 19, 2020April 19, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Borg, Digital drawing, Digital sketch, Fun, Picard, Portrait, Sci fi, Star Trek2 Comments

I’m a big fan of Star Trek, and one of my favourite characters was Jean Luc Picard from the Next Generation series. I think the actor Patrick Stewart gives the part a great gravitas, although sometimes it can get a little weird.

I don’t have a favourite episode, but I do like the film where the Borg go back in time to an Earth where Zephram Cocheran is about to use warp drive for the first time. I can’t remember what it was called. Something like First Contact. But that’s the title of a Science Fiction film with Jodie Foster, about aliens contacting the Earth. Written by Carl Sagan, so I’m not sure.

This portrait was drawn on the sketchfu website that I used to work on. I think this is about seven years old. I will probably find more of them popping up on my Facebook memories.

Cat in a box.

Posted on April 18, 2020April 18, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blogging, Box, Digital drawing, Fun, Humour, Poem, Poetry, Schrodingers car, Short poem2 Comments

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The cat sat in the box.

Not on a mat,

or in a hat,

not on a roof

or under a hoof.

Not in a car

or on top of a door.

Not up the stairs

or on the chairs.

But in a box

where it lived,

or died.

It was Schrodingers

purring..

Cat.

I’ve been caracatured !

Posted on April 18, 2020April 18, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Adaptation, Agatha Christie, Blogging, Caracature, Detective, Film, Friendship, Fun, Humour, Miss Marple, Sleuth, TVLeave a comment

FB_IMG_1587151615382 — Me as Miss Marple!

Imagine my delight when I saw this yesterday. My lovely friend Stephen Talbot (his copyright ©) has been doing a series of caracatures and this is the one he did if me, in the guise of Miss Marple played by Margaret Rutherford.

If anyone hasn’t heard of the author, she was Agatha Christie. She wrote many detective books, with sleuths like Miss Jane Marple, and Hercule Poirot.

In addition to the books there were several films, made from the 1950’s onwards. Some of them starred famous actors, like Elizabeth Taylor.

There have also been television adaptations, of which my favourite was Joan Hickson as Miss Marple.

Recently the BBC have done a few adaptation of Christie mysteries. But the most recent strayed a long way from the book it was based on. I’ve forgotten what it was called… I think they tried to over simplify the story,, so removed some of the characters.

I would love to see “murder at the gallop” again, its an old film, with wonderful music. Lots of fun.

Lunch in odd times

Posted on April 18, 2020April 18, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Beans, Chicken fingers, curry powder, Food, Fun, Humour, Life, Lunch, Photo, Portmeirion plates, SweetcornLeave a comment

Baked beans and sweetcorn with added hot curry powder and breaded chicken fingers.

It’s not what I would normally cook for a meal, but it was definitely filling.

Not much else to say about it, except the sweetcorn was frozen. I served it on pretty Portmeirion pottery plates.

Well, I don’t think I’ll say anything more except it was orange coloured! I guess I could do a series of pictures of different coloured food combinations, green cabbage and brocolli maybe, with green cheese sauce?

Perhaps not!

Day thirty

Posted on April 17, 2020April 17, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #uskstoke, Art, Blogging, Drawing, Ending, Fun, Humour, Life, Sketching, Thirty day challenge, Urban sketchers Stoke on trent2 Comments

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The urban sketchers challenge (Stoke-on-Trent) has just finished. We had to do quick three minute sketches each hour to show how our day had gone. I didn’t see the days challenge until just after two, because I got up late. Its amazing how fast an hour goes when you have to document it. And my day was more varied than I thought it would be considering I didn’t do any gardening today. I finished at midnight. Tomorrow we are doing a sketch through Zoom, the meeting app, of Liverpool cathedral. I might try and do a drawing of it. If I get up in time!

Digital art

Posted on April 17, 2020April 17, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Amy Winehouse, Digital art, Drawing, Fun, Galaxy, Illustration, Pattern, Sketchfu, SketchingLeave a comment

About seven years ago I was doing digital drawings regularly at a website called sketchfu which closed down. I had a notification on my Facebook page because my drawing of Amy Winehouse popped up on my memories. I thought I would put some of these on here.

These were drawn with simple tools, no layers or filters. Just five different sized pens, a colour picker, a pallette, an eraser and opacity and transparency options. I’m sad it closed because it was somewhere I could share my art and enjoy the community of fellow artists.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Fun