New paintings and regular art updates.
Got this from my Facebook memories. It’s a finger painting of a duck using the Artrage oils app. I like how it has a metallic sheen if you use the slider on it. The brushes on it can also create textures. I love drawing and this gives me the freedom to sketch if I don’t have a real sketchbook with me. I’m pleased with the colours that I used.
By the way”duck”is a well used friendly greeting between people in Stoke on Trent…
I decided to play with digital drawing again did a drawing in the Artrage app and them modified it in the Sketchbook app. I then used the incollage app to create a collage of the steps I had taken. Finally I used an Instagram filter to change the hues of the images. I did all of this as a finger drawing. I need to try using a stylus for a more controlled effect.
Someone just asked what people remembered of their grandparents house. I thought about the open fire in the hearth..
There was a coal fire, they used paper ‘spills’ to light it, my sisters and I would roll sheets of newspaper into long thin tubes which were the spills… Grandma once had a chimney fire. She used to ‘draw’ the air through the chimney with a sheet of newspaper held against the front of the fire. She would leave a little gap at the bottom and the wind above the chimney would draw the air up, and with it the flames from the kindling she had lit (usually small sticks of wood). Once she had it burning she would bank it up with coal and we would stare at the lovely warm flames. But I remember one day the chimney hadn’t been swept and the soot inside it caught fire! I think the firebrigade had to put it out. I remember being outside watching black smoke and flames coming out of the top of the chimney!
Other memories? A big tin bath on a shelf at the far end of the kitchen before they had an inside bathroom. And grandma’s handmade rag rug made by pushing short lengths of cloth through an old sack cloth so it made a shaggy cloth mat which lay in front of the hearth.
Our grandparents had a chicken coop in the back garden and I remember the hens too. I must have been very young… Vague memories…
There are some verses in the Hobbit by JRR Tolkien “The Road goes ever on”….
I wish I could remember it. I could look it up, but basically I’m too tired! The photo I took last year, at the Dorothy Clive garden reminds me of the verse, the road or path winds off into the distance. Who knows where it will lead as it rises and falls, but there is the possibility of adventure and even danger. I guess it could also indicate what happens to us in life, the ups and downs, you can’t forecast what is round the corner, it could be something nice like an old friend, or someone jumping out at you with malice. The path isn’t always sunny and bright. But we have to live it the best way we can.
I may be wrong, but I think this plants colloquial name is Fox and Cubs? I think you get a main flower then a number of smaller flowers around it. I’ve seen it growing as a weed, with dandelion style seed heads? But I may be completely wrong and it could be a different plant entirely? If anyone knows please tell me. I think we saw these plants at the Dorothy Clive garden last year when we visited in the summer.
Rhododendrons look lovely, but they can be an invasive species. They shade out smaller plants and the ground around them becomes bare. I know in some places they are removed. Rhododendrons are native to Asia but were imported by plant collectors in the Victorian era. They ‘layer’ themselves to spread, a branch can touch the ground and where it rubs against the soil it will send out roots (or layer). This also happens with other plants. Forest and parkland have to be managed to protect it from invasive species like this and others such as Himalayan Balsam and Japanese Knotweed.
When we stayed at Robin Hoods Bay and I came home with Shingles!
This was eight years ago, time goes so fast! We stayed in an upside down house with the lounge on the top floor so you could see the sea view. There was a very steep staircase and the hill the village is built on is very steep too. There is no parking on the main road through the village down to the sea so you have to park at the top and walk up and down to get to the house down a little side lane. I painted the view while I was there, sitting in sunshine looking out, enjoying the view…
Little buds into purple flowers or bracts. The flowers on our new hydrangea are coming out. They were a surprise. Hydrangea usually have blue or pink flowers depending on the acidity or alkalinity of the soil. I’ve heard of people putting copper nails in the soil with them to change their colour. I don’t know if it works as its probaby a old wives tale? A good garden plant and can grow into a small shrub.
If humans had taglines, what would yours be?
I had to look this up:
“In entertainment, a tagline is a short text which serves to clarify a thought for, or is designed with a form of, dramatic effect. Many tagline slogans are reiterated phrases associated with an individual, social group, or product. Wikipedia”
I would say I’m a “pattern loving gal”? Does that work as a tagline for me? I add patterns to most of my art, and the older I get the more I seem to do it. The three words explain my feelings about art. My genuine enjoyment of entanglements and textures. My enjoyment of and involvement with pattern in my art and designs.
I cannot think of any better description.
There is a website called blitzortung.org you can open up, and if you look at the live maps you can see lightning strikes as they happen. The site covers the whole world but you can zoom in on it.
Tonight it got very dark and cloudy and we had a few flashes of lightning with rumbles of thunder about 5 to 3 miles away (10 and 6 seconds), Light travels fast, sound follows, so 2 seconds equals a mile away.
We just had some heavyish rain but the storm petered out. Looking at the lightning map, the storm split up into two. The storm stopped about three miles away from here
, but a branch of it was heading towards Crewe. There were over 5 thousand strikes in an hour!
I’ve been interested about lightening since I was talking to an elderly lady about 25 years ago. She said she was in her house several years before that. She had the window open because it was so hot, suddenly a ball of lightening came in through the window and bounced off the floor. She didn’t explain what happened afterwards, whether it just dissipated. But clearly it was not too traumatic. I have heard of ball lightning, so it might have been true….
Mallaband-Brown