Draw round anything with a thin pen and you get an interesting effect. It’s something I do occasionally as a meditation. Trying to keep a little distance from coloured splodges or around lines that I have already drawn or doodled. Somehow the lines remind me of the contours on a map, because they seem to join things together. Mostly I look at the back of my pictures and see if the ink has bled through it. I’ve written about this technique here before. It’s a way of creating something a little more abstract.
Nine years ago we had a party at Loud Mouth Women singing group. I can’t remember exactly what it was for but this just came up on my Facebook page. I’m sure we will have sung many songs in different languages. It’s fun to sing, the group doesn’t need you to be able to read music. If you decide to join in we try and help people decide if they sing high, middle or low parts, but people can move around. You don’t have to perform, you can if you want to though, we have a few gigs a year. I didn’t go for a few weeks but I’m so glad to be back! If you have a local choir think of joining?
A loud beeping then ‘attention fire’ ‘attention fire’!
First I thought the fridge alarm was going off until the voice started. Then I remembered we had replaced our old smoke alarm because it had started to beep every five minutes even when we changed the battery.
So where was the fire? No sign, not a sniff or sight of smoke. No hot spots, I’d turned off the heater, the lights were mostly out. The kitchen door was shut and I’d only had the kettle on for a cup of decaff coffee.
What could have set it off? I wonder if a spider has moved in? I stayed awake till 7am waiting for it to go off again. No smoke without fire? So tired! Be alarmed, be very alarmed!
Spode studios are having an open day this Saturday so I hope to be there to show off some of my newest ideas and paintings. It’s sometimes quite cold though so I will have to dress warmly. This horse painting has a pot for the potteries hidden in it. I’m not sure if I will stay in my studio or set up a little market stall so I can try and sell a few things. I will have to decide.
An old drawing I did of the local church one Christmas. It’s coming up to that time if year to decide what paintings to do for Christmas. I don’t want to make them too twee. They have to be something someone would want to hang on a wall. I half want to paint little icon paintings, or maybe images taken from something like the book of Kells. It’s hard to decide, do Robins work? Or are they just things you find on a Christmas card that get brought out once a year? Who knows?
Oh dear! What have I done? I haven’t posted much recently, and since the clocks went back I have got less views. Maybe I’m boring people. It’s hard not to be repetitive and I’ve also expressed some political views that might have put people off or annoyed them. But I can’t help being honest about my opinions. I don’t think I’m extreme in any way, just concerned about what is happening in the world with democracy and climate change. Tell me if there is anything I need to do to change? The Internet is an echo chamber, sometimes you only hear what you want to. I don’t think I can change that much?
I was struck by how many toy adverts are on the TV now coming up for Christmas. There were a lot of crying baby dolls and I decided to draw this in response (for my own amusement). I guess I’m a closet cartoonist! I don’t mean to offend anyone, so apologies in advance x
Moira had noticed her cat kept staring up in a corner of the room. She could not see anything herself but she knew cats had better senses. Keener eyesight, a more acute sense of smell, hearing that was so much more able to notice small sounds.
Each night the cat would curl up to sleep, but then become alert, aware, interested in something. It would watch the ceiling for a few minutes, then close its eyes again and relax.
Moira started checking the time of each encounter with what was going on. Ten past eleven until seventeen minutes past. A precise time every night? Very strange.
Moira suspected that someone or something was playing games? She had friends that could do tricks, they had pranked her before, could it be them? But when she contacted them they denied any involvement.
It was on the eleventh day that she finally saw something. A drip of red running down the wall, slightly hidden by a picture. Could it be mould? Some old houses had problems with fungi? She decided to ring a builder if there was anymore problems the next night.
She sat down to watch TV the next evening. At precisely eleven ten pm the cat stretched and looked up. Then it did something new, it hissed! Moira looked up too, just as a disembodied foot pierced down through the ceiling. Slightly transparent, it paddled the air, not touching anything, floating, then simply vanished. The cat settled down. Moira didn’t!
Mallaband-Brown 