Town or City

Town/City full of buildings sketch. There are many historical buildings in Stoke on Trent but a lot of them are derelict and falling down. Where places like Manchester have had investment old buildings are refurbished and turned into apartments or restored to their former glory. Here in Stoke they languish, are bought up by out of town businesses that allow them to fall down, get broken into or in some cases have unexplained fires. Severs properties in the North of our city have had fires over the last few months. Is it wrong to be suspicious about that? I do wonder and worry that one of the most important areas of industrial and vernacular architecture is not being cared for. We could use the better properties even if we only keep the facades. But our local leaders seem hell bent on stripping back the past, losing a heritage that could be supported. You only have to look at Etruria Industrial Museum to see somewhere that has worked. But I despair for so much of our surroundings.

Ow!

Ow! I was getting some paintings out of the car boot today and I pulled the door down and hit my nose. It really hurt so I rubbed it as you do and everything seemed OK. I hadn’t hit the bridge of my nose. So nothing broken. I went into Spode and priced up my work. Hubby didn’t tell me I had a cut on my nose. I spoke to several people, no mention! Either I looked so rough that they didn’t want to say anything, or it didn’t look that bad, or they were just very polite. Anyway, I only noticed it because it’s started to hurt and it felt rough under my finger, so yes, ouch!

Preparations

I will be at studio 21 at Spode tomorrow for our annual Open Day. Come and see me painting in the studio or visit the makers market where I will have minature paintings for sale. Then during the day I will try to complete a new painting of a bottle oven (a pottery kiln).

It’s been two years since I’ve been there properly. My fear of Covid, then illness and bereavement have kept me out. But everyone was so nice today. I’ve entered some of my minature paintings for the craft Market. I thought people might use them as Christmas stocking fillers. There’s everything from a tiny giraffe with an abstract background to a small Jupiter with great red storm and a moon passing by. Maybe I will sell a few.

Spode Open day

I’m going to go to Spode Open Day on Saturday. It’s part of being a studio member at the old Spode Factory in Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent. I might be selling small paintings, but it’s been so long since I’ve been there that I have really got out of going in. With the pandemic and then illness and then a recent bereavement it’s been hard to pluck up courage to go in. My mind just got stuck in park (if that’s the phrase) and its been hard to get out of that feeling, but I think I’m slowly making progress. Anyway the painting is called Green Man, it’s a favourite subject of mine. Something serene and mystical about this mythical character (maybe not this particular one though).

Members collage

This is another group collage that the Orme Art Group did during lock-down. We each did a part of this Picasso painting and then submitted them to one of the group to stitch them together. I can’t remember which bit was mine. It’s interesting because although we were copying from the original you can see different techniques for each artist and also different colours and tones. I really enjoyed doing these collaborations.

Bleach!

Two photos, bleached and then painted over.

When you are an artist and your hubby decides to try and clean his trousers (with neat bleach!) No! The brown corduroy turned orange in patches. I have no brown dye, I wouldn’t know how to use it?! What to do? I bunged them in the washing machine to get any residual bleach out. Then while they were still wet I mixed up some brown and black acrylic paint. I have painted it on to see if it covered the bleached areas. It’s still a bit orange so I will give it another layer when it’s dry. I don’t want the cloth to become too stiff. At least it means they aren’t being thrown away and the paint should be colour fast!

Doodle, drawing a line

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.

Keep calm

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?

My smoke alarm went off

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!