New paintings and regular art updates.
Cat presents, not so much presents as lovingly presented remains of mice. Ooooh no! I get up in the morning, and there on the doorstep, something not very nice. Is there a deterrent? I feed my cats well, I give them toys, and yet they try and show love in the only way they can…. Yuk! I’m glad it only happens occasionally.
That was what today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was. I have three large bookcases in our living room so I drew an interpretation of them. I couldn’t see all the titles let alone draw them all. I also added cat. It’s a bit scribbly and decided to leave the drawing as black and white although I am tempted to colour it.
Your phone is 85% full. Please transfer data to you SD card.
Trouble is that’s almost full too. Can I get an SD card with more memory? Can I get the data transferred over? Why have I filled this phone up? I love it. Its got lots and lots (thousands) of photos on it. And I look at them, using them for inspiration for my art. If I transferred them to the cloud would they stay available? Some companies are now withdrawing the use of free cloud storage. The world must be filling up with data too… Bring back photo albums.. Dusty memories….
A view of St Austell in Cornwall that was at the BCB exhibition recently at Swift House, Stoke-on-Trent. With subtle tones of sepia colour it depicted a semi industrial landscape. I didn’t see a notice but I’m guessing it was made of China clay which has been quarried there for centuries. One of the sites was used to create the Eden Project, a set of giant domed greenhouses or ‘biomes’ which house tropical and arid environments from more equatorial climes.
St Austell is a town in Cornwall inland from the southern coast, in a landscape dotted with abandoned tin mines. It was once the home of a famous poet called Jack Clemo. He was blind but managed to write his poems while supported by his mother in the 1950’s?
Scales again, I was playing with combinations of colour and black and white. I’m building a large collection of them. Maybe this is enough? Next step is to hang them on my character. Discussing the idea with others I might do a dragon that changes throughout the book. Not because I can’t draw it from different angles, but because it might need to change depending on its circumstances….. Hmmm, I keep seeing new directions!
Sun sets about 6pm now and dark clouds bordered by edges of creamy white. Soon the clocks will be going back and we will lose an hour of light in the afternoons. It’s then I start getting very sad, I don’t suffer from depression, but I just wish we could hold on to that extra hour. I’m not bothered about gaining an extra hour of light in the morning. There was an experiment in the 1970’s in Britain where we kept British Summer time in the winter. They found that there were less accidents involving children because if they were tired this was combated by them being able to see traffic with the lighter evenings. I’m sure there are statistics somewhere on the net that confirms this. For whatever reason the experiment was ended after three years and we reverted to Greenwich mean time in the winter and British Summer time in the summer.
Why go on about this? I think the British Summer time experiment saved energy while it was going on. Somehow less energy was used. Maybe they should think about it again?
It’s Mid-october and things were mild but now they are getting colder. Last week we had temperatures in the high teen centigrade and this week they have gone down to 12 or 13 in the day time and 5 or 6°C at night. Leaves are finally starting to change colour but still some plants seem to think its Spring!
My Raspberry plants for instance have come back into flower. I don’t have a close up lens, but I managed to get a photo of this raspberry flower. It’s a bit cold and bedraggled after the cold, heavy rain we had today, but despite a tinge of brown on the edges of its petals its still trying. It probably won’t turn into fruit as there are no insects around now. Still interesting to see.
Ex-outside cat slept on the stairs last night. He sometimes sleeps on our bed now but instead he was halfway down and I almost stood on him. He is very big and was lying on about two thirds of the step. Luckily I just saw him in time. He is a real character, when we are in the living room he sits between the arms of the chairs we sit on. He seems to really want to be with us. I hope we have completely gained his trust.
Since he moved in with us he’s put on weight and become much calmer. He seems to be very settled with us now. He also gets on well with our other two cats despite him being twice the size of our small female cat. I can’t imagine a time without cats.
With the advent of space travel becoming available for space tourists I wonder if its something I would go for.
The cost is exorbitant, in the millions, and the risks must be considered. Also the ones that are going are either very rich or famous. I don’t begrudge them doing it, but I hope this doesn’t turn into a new thing to do on their ‘bucket list’. Maybe instead of going into space for ten minutes they could donate that money to pay for covid vaccines in poor countries, or support working towards cutting pollution or reducing global warming.
Instead of selfish joy rides these space tourists should be more considerate. Me? If I could afford it I would stay with my feet firmly on the ground!
A finger painting done with the Artrage oils digital app which I think is free through Google. I use it on my little android phone. Two tools, a brush with four varieties with a sliding size bar and a pallette to choose colours from and the ability to to change the effect from non metallic to metallic. It’s quite a challenge to draw with a tool that smears and smooths out the surface as you draw on it. I enjoy it because you get such a different effect from other sketching apps.
