New paintings and regular art updates.
You arch the river
Cover the water
Stretch over the bend
Fly across your reflection.
Green trees,
Green grey surface,
Grey and yellow stones
Pale browns.
Your feet touch down in the stream
The curve of you bends over the water.
They travel across you
but don’t see your majesty.
What does the word green mean to you? A mixture of two primary colours, blue and yellow? The green of photosynthesis, plants growing and spreading across the earth. Or green (ecological) politics, trying to get us humans to realise we need to take more care of the world?
If its the latter what small things can we do to help?
You could try growing some of your food from seed. Maybe some tomatoes or a pepper plant. Even if you don’t have a garden you can try growing things on a bright window ledge.
A bit more space and you could grow a tree. You can buy miniature fruit trees which grow masses of fruit on a small plant. This is done by a process of grafting where the fruit you want to grow is grafted onto a rootstock which tends to be more vigorous than the top of the tree. You can buy ones which bear two or three different types of fruit on one trunk. Or grow some potato’s or other vegetables. Maybe get an allotment?
More green ideas include recycling. The planets oceans are becoming clogged with plastic. That useful but ubiquitous molecule that seems to have over taken modern living. We don’t choose to let turtles choke on plastic bags, but they are doing, mistaking them for jellyfish which they naturally predate.
Green also means letting animals alone. Letting dwindling populations of Lions, Tigers, Elephants, Rhino, Zebra, Polar Bears, and others survive. Not hunting them to extinction. I dread getting images on my Facebook page showing hunters glorying over the death of a giraffe or lion they have just shot.
Why do we do it? There are scarce resources on this planet but we seem bent on destroying or feasting on everything we see.
Where are the inventors who will improve technology and cut our massive use of fossil fuels? When are we going to realise that global warming is real, whether it is created by man or other means. It doesn’t matter what you blame we still need to try and do something about it. We should share clean technologies with less advanced countries so we all gain an advantage.
About a week ago I saw a news item. Children around the country taking a day off school to march and protest against global warming and point out that they are the ones who will inherit our mess and mistakes.
Green must be on all our minds, green should be the first colour we think about. I hope green is the future..
I took this today and noticed how much bright red was in it and subtle greens to compliment it. Even the plant food and bits of the labels on the washing up liquid are red. Splashes of colour lift this photo, making it zing. I was going to crop it, but I also like the door handle on the left side mimicking the curve of the tulip stems. The green leaves and sponge and washing up liquid are complementary. Even the cloth on the cupboard helps to hold it together. More if a still life than a photo. Objects can just spring out at you. Especially when you get a bit of sunshine to enhance the shapes of the vase and tulip flowers.
Gallanthus, the Latin name for Snowdrops. They are out in force at Rode Hall gardens near Scholar Green, on the North Staffordshire/ Cheshire border. It’s off the A34 between Stoke-on-Trent and Congleton. The snowdrops are in flower right now and you can buy little bags of them (in the green) wjuch means you get bulbs with the leaves and flowers and you plant them directly into the ground under trees so they can spread out. They have many different sorts of the flowers that brighten the grounds of the hall. The snowdrop walks are on till March 3rd? And open till 4pm.
We walked through the grounds and gardens of the hall. Winding paths lead through bushes and trees, up and down little hills and slopes, past pools and woven willow sculptures down to the lake at the end of the longest path. There you can see a wooded island where Herons are starting to nest. I got blurry shots of four herons flying around the tree tops.
Back up past the hall we had a meal and coffee at the cafe and then on to an old barn to see an Exhibition by three local art groups that is on till the start of March.
It’s great to get out into the world and see it changing. The snowdrops were in such great clumps on the ground that it truly did look like they were patches of snow under the bare trees. It’s a great place to explore.
Wip, work in progress. Someone has asked me for a painting of a green woman in green, brown and gold. I’m letting a little bit of red creep in. And turquoise too.
I want to model the shape to make it a bit more 3d so I will need to spend more time on it but it’s come on a lot considering I only started it today!
I actually went to the studio despite having a cold. Once I was in there I pout all the heating on. Snug in there but freezing in the corridors Plus I’m planning a painting of Jupiter. We’ll a tryptich actually. 3 long canvases.. Photos to follow.
It’s been a few years since we visited Devon and I want to go again soon. When the Sun shines its glorious, the air feels clean and the Sun gleaming off the sea makes you feel alive.
These flowers were in the tangled hedge along the pathway to the shore. I only used my old digital camera to take the shot and I was pleased at how clearly it came out. The stamen were curved into loops, the pink petals had deep cuts in them making it look like they were two petals, not one. The sunlight just catching areas of the photo lifted the dark areas and gave it interest. I was also pleased with the slight blurring in the background.
The whole photo brings back memories of the sandy path and steps down to a small bay, the blue sky and sea. Sitting on a rock as the sea came in to the low cliffs surrounding the bay. And the view out over Plymouth sound. We must go back.
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Like Poseidons trident, copper, turquoise green,
You stand gaunt against the sky.
A foregone, forgotten, street light or gaslamp?
Still holding your shape,
like an ancient but modern sculpture,
battling the elements, salt spray, sea mists. ..
Atop a castle keep? No arch of stone,
barrier to tide.
To light the lonely home after one too many?
Find their mackerel way back from the fishmongers?
Spent a day out at sea and you, lighthouse, cast a gentle glow?
Find solace for the bereaved,
a tristing place away from the town?
Seafront, sentinel, what did you Sea?
Green men tangled in a big green square,
I just wrote a really bad poem about Green men but I decided to delete it and not inflict it on you!
These were drawn in ArtRage oils, a free app from samsung galaxy. They were duplicated in an app called layout. The colours were enhanced using Instagram filters.
I like the way the digital brushes give it a more 3d impression. You can use ArtRage with 4 brush styles and metallic or non metallic paint. There is also a slider to change the size of the brush head.
Layout allows you to choose up to 9 pictures that can be moved or flipped to make new patterns. As you work your way through editing the pictures you end on a page that takes your drawing into Instagram, here you can edit the picture further. Eventually you end up with whatever image you want modified to suit your requirements.
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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
Mallaband-Brown