A year ago

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A year ago I was outside Chatterley and Whitfield colliery drawing with the Stoke Urban Sketchers.

This year Stoke-on-Trent is hosting the United Kingdom Urban Sketchers annual festival from 7th to 9th June 2019! There may be a lot if sketchers descending on the city.

There is a lot of industrial archaeology and architecture here so I think people will enjoy it. Hopefully I will be able to get involved in it.

 

There are lots of places in Stoke-on-Trent and in the surrounding countryside which are worth drawing. I would love people to come here and fall in love with this city.

Sleight of hand

Today I went to our local hall because we were doing auditions for this years mystery plays.
I got chatting to someone holding a pack of cards. He said he was waiting for someone and had bought the cards with him to fill in some time.

He is a Magician, stage name Jack Wild and he was brilliant. He showed us a couple of tricks. I don’t understand how he did them. They were slick, they were right in front of my eyes and they were mind boggling. It was only a deck of cards and finding the card I chose but it was impressive.

Yes I know that it’s just a skill, but it’s a brilliant skill. If I ever want a magician I would book him.

A Facebook page…

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I’ve come across a page recently on Facebook called ” terrible art in charity shops”. I’ve been mesmerised by it. I have seen some truly odd images, and some that are not too bad. I’m astounded at what people put on the page. I guess some of the pictures are sold so people can reuse the frames.

After half an hour of scrolling down I had to stop. I think the page is not meant to be unkind, more a gentle humour and hopefully witty remarks.

As someone who had a work put into a charity shop, but then had it bought by someone who really liked it, I guess I can see both sides of the discussion.

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Sketchfu cats 2007 to about 2011?

I may have the date wrong when I stopped doing these. The site closed and I downloaded a lot of my drawings so they didn’t get lost. They are drawings using the simple tools that were on the site. If you have seen my other drawings I posted here, you will know I did some challenges, there are a couple of those here. Plus portraits of my cat Tig who sadly died, but who I still remember with love. Than there are some random cartoons and doodles. I❤️cats!

Why do I write and what am I writing?

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It struck me that my writing is as mixed up as my painting and art. I’m interested in poetry and short stories, documenting life and writing about esoteric stuff like why the earth isn’t flat.

I sometimes ramble on around similar subjects, then get bored and throw something else into the mix – like writing about bread making, or my cats and garden.

I have a lot of thoughts flowing round in my head. I didn’t ask for them to be there.  I’m irritated when Sci-fi shows have sound in the vacuum of space, or someone tells a lie about something that is clearly not true.

I was talking to my hubby about this earlier. I do not want to be different, I was going to write “normal” but perhaps I am. Maybe writers are those people that stick to a specific narrative or genre? Or maybe not. I know I don’t do much research about things, most of my writing is imagined or recollected from books and TV programmes.

I started out thinking it would be purely an art blog, a way of selling my paintings, but it’s morphed. I write mors here than anywhere else and I hope it doesn’t get snatched away. I never check how much content I’m creating. It just flows….. And I was once asked why I don’t have adverts… I don’t like them! I keep seeing photos of lemons, or some green gunk that clears up skin problems…. No, sorry, I’m not happy to sell it….

Busy in the garden

Most weekends I’ve been busy recently with other things, but I decided to get out and plant up tomatoes in the grow bags and added some pepper plants ( which had sadly been partly munched by slugs). We don’t use any pesticides or herbicides so everything just keeps growing and we seem to have lots of bees round the cotoneaster flowers. We saw a couple of butterflies too. There is a bare patch where we are having a summer house put in soon. Then I can get some clematis growing over the fence.

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Blurry shot of a bee on the cotoneaster plant. Its covered in tiny flowers so very attractive to them.

Last year’s Tulips

I’ve not had much time in the garden recently and missed most of the daffodils and tulips so here are some tulips from last year. Things have also got a bit squashed by some building and gardening work, I want to get back out there and tidy things up.

There are a few patterns created by duplicating the photos using the layout app on my phone. I hope you like these.

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Eyes digitally drawn

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Don’t look at me like that. It’s scary, she said. The screen stared back, green glaring eyes and red scaled skin. Only the slow movement of its pupils indicated life. The screen had been blank up until a few minutes ago. A voice had said humans were under control by the Jranson Collective and if all people worked with them they would be spared destruction.

She scanned her phone. The same image was being sent to it. All computer services are in our power, said the staring eyes. Do not attempt to attack us.

What the devil can we do? She thought. Nothing came to mind, but maybe? She picked up the land-line phone, a steady dialling tone greeted her. Now what’s the Doctors number? she thought.