Old painting

Posted on June 28, 2023June 28, 2023 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Apple, apples coffee house, Art, Fine Art, Life, Painting, Proserpine2 Comments

My friend Apple has a restaurant and also a coffee shop. The shop has been closed for a while because of the pandemic, but now things are calming down she’s trying to reopen it. After three years she’s putting a lot of work into creating a social and friendly space for people to meet up. She’s given herself a month to get things sorted out. I was talking to her and found this photo of an old painting I did based on the painting Proserpine by one of the Pre-Raphaelite artists. I can’t remember the actual artist.

What I did was to try and copy the painting and add an apple instead of a pomegranate to relate to my friends name. You can’t see but I also painted Apples coffee house at the top right on a sign. Sorry the photos a bit blurry!

Flower head

Posted on June 28, 2023June 28, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Ceramic, Flowers, hand built, Head, Life, Pottery, Rain, Sculpture, snapdragon, WaterLeave a comment

Pottery head I made over twenty years ago. It’s planted up with straggly snapdragons this year but this photo from two years ago looks better. I really need to get out in the garden but I don’t seem to have the strength to sort things out at the moment. I’m fed up and I know gardening would help but the heat over the lost few days has made me really weary. It’s been close to 30°C. At least my hubby has been watering plants. Today? We are expecting heavy rain showers, so the plants will get a little water.

Too many pictures

Posted on June 27, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 99.9%, Art, Blogging, Full, Life, Memories, Photo, Photography, Pictures, Stuck2 Comments

How do I reduce the size of my saved photos? I’m getting close to my limit again, so I’m still deleting pictures off blogs. But ideally I want to keep the photos. I could go into a post and edit each individual image, reducing the file size to medium or small? I’d only have to go through thousands of posts? I can’t afford to increase my WordPress /Jetpack package. So I’ll keep fudging things and deleting my most fuzzy or boring photos… Maybe I’ll win the lottery?

Don’t dip!

Posted on June 27, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Life, Linseed oil, Mistake, Oil paints, Painting, Poem, Poetry, Taste, Tea, Turps, Water2 Comments

Don’t dip your brush in your tea!

It might make it taste foul..

You’ll see!

Oil and water doesn’t mix

And you’ll be in a fix!

Cos your tea isn’t water

Remember you ought’a

Put your mug somewhere else

Linseed oil, or turps taste

Vile, what a mistake…

Take it from me!

Quiet day

Posted on June 27, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Beautiful, Birds, Blackbirds, Life, Magpies, Music, Notes, Pigeons, Robins, Singing, Sound2 Comments

When it’s quiet here I can still hear the birds singing in the garden. Blackbirds and Robins seem to sing the loudest, but I can also hear Pigeons cooing and Magpies cackling in the morning as they dive and swoop around the trees.

The blackbirds were singing on top of our neighbours chimney pot, long and varied songs to call for a mate and to display where its territory is. Now they have become a bit quieter, they may have raused their young by now. The Robins still flit about but with the heat I think they are quieter too.

The world keeps spinning and the birds keep singing. I hope the birds keep coming back. X

Waiting for cherries

Posted on June 26, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Cherries, Cherry tree, Food, Fruit, Gardening, Life, not ready yet, Red, Ripening, Sweet, Tasty8 Comments

Three years ago our cherry crop was already picked. The tree came from the old Woolworths shop in Stoke about twenty five years ago. It must have been happy because now it’s about thirty feet high.

The cherries are starting to ripen, but they are not ready yet. Maybe next week we can reach the lower ones. The rest we donate to the birds. One thing I need to do is buy a big umbrella, it really helps to stop the cherries we pick from rolling off into the undergrowth!

Butterfly?

Posted on June 26, 2023June 26, 2023 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Artrage, Butterfly, Colourful, Digital drawing, Drawing, Life, red admiral, SketchingLeave a comment

I just drew this… I saw a red admiral butterfly outside and wanted to take a photo of it, but it flew off. I decided to draw something against a dark background to make it stand out more. This was drawn in the Artrage app I use, it gives nice metallic effects, hence the abstract look of this butterfly.

Monkey sculpture

Posted on June 26, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, conservation, Life, Macaque Monkeys, mother and baby, Sculpture, Stoke-on trent, tree stump, TrenthamLeave a comment

Mother and baby macaque Monkey sculpted from an old tree stump. This is at the entrance to the Trentham Monkey Forest. We went a couple of weeks ago and saw a few babies, a bit older than this one. They were swinging off branches and twigs and learning to climb. I think the guide said there have been eight babies born so far this year.

They are happy in our climate because they originate high up in the mountains in North Africa so they are used to wide temperature variations. The monkey forest is part of a group of parks, the rest are in France, and they are working to conserve the Macaque population. Worth a visit.

I’m not sure I do?

Posted on June 25, 2023June 25, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1978, gratitudes, Life, Prompt, self-care, taking care of yourself, ThinkingLeave a comment

How do you practice self-care?

I had to look it up.

“Self-care has been defined as the process of establishing behaviors to ensure holistic well-being of oneself, to promote health, and actively manage illness when it occurs. Individuals engage in some form of self-care daily with food choices, exercise, sleep, reading and dental care. Wikipedia“

It’s all very well having a definition, but do you keep to it? I for instance, try and do certain activities that help me, but not every day. Sometimes I remember, other times? I’m too engrossed in whatever crisis I’m dealing with to even remember to take care of myself.

I have responsibility for caring for others, I also have people who need my help. If I don’t help I feel guilty, and that’s not easy to put to one side.

So what things do I do? A little bit of chair yoga because I cannot get up and down off the floor. Choir twice a week for my mental health. And a gratitudes diary that I try and write three short things in that have happened in the day. They are usually minor, but it helps train your mind towards a more positive track… (gratitudes can include traffic lights on green for instance, or a favourite film coming on the TV).

Now I’ve read the definition I might just try a bit harder…

Common poppy

Posted on June 25, 2023June 25, 2023 Posted in UncategorizedTagged common poppy, Gardening, Green, Life, Poppy, Pretty, Red, red poppy, Welsh poppy, yellow poppyLeave a comment

On the pavement outside our garden this little beauty I’d flowering. I think its out of a packet of wild flower seeds that my husband scattered a few months ago. It’s a surprise as the majority of poppy’s we have in the garden are yellow “Welsh” poppies. I love the crinkly way the petals expand. I’m hoping we get a few more soon.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Life