Hubby digging

Posted on September 2, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Etruria Artists, Friends, Garden, Life, Meeting people, Nervous, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Portuguese cafe, Sketching, Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent, Urban sketchingLeave a comment

Fork in hand, pulling up weeds, tweed overcoat on, wearing a deerstalker hat, and enjoying a showery morning at Shelton allotments. No sketching challenge today, but we later met with some friends at a social distance so I got my sketch pad out again while enjoying a pleasant coffee in a Portuguese cafe. My nerves were a bit jangly after two seperate meetings with people so I wore a mask on both occasions and gloves when I was weeding. It’s hard to think the world might be going back to normal even though covid 19 is still here.

Painting, nebula on a star…

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Eleanora street, Life, Nebula, Painting, Space, Spode, Staffordshire, Stars, Stoke-on-TrentLeave a comment

Picture from the studio at spode last year. I thought it would be fun to paint a nebula onto a star shaped canvas I found. I’ve never seen another one. I also painted the Earth on a hexagonal canvas, but again I’ve not been able to find more. The shops seem to have less options to what they had even a year ago. I would really like to get hold of a circular canvas.

Friends making a bench….

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Chairs, DIY, Gardening, Life, making, Photo, Plants, Recycling, Screws, Wood2 Comments

Two old chairs and some planks of wood. Upcycling I think it’s called? Or is it recycling…. The chairs are solid so this should work. I think she’s going to make it into a garden seat with a space in the centre for a plant pot or planter. The good thing about this is that it is recycled, so instead of hundreds of pounds this could be made from scrap out of a skip and some screws to hold it together.

Life gets everywhere

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Dandelion, Earth, Environment, Growth, Life, Photo, Plant, Random, Spode, Time2 Comments

Even iin the cracks of windowledges or steps. This was growing at Spode last year. Not pretty, but green, seed heads developing, waiting to be dandelion clocks.

Next year there might be ten new plants, then a hundred the year after. Not exponential, but a creaping greening. A creating of new life, roots diving deep, breaking up the earth. If only we could embrace nature more? Not kill it but give it a helping hand. We know its wrong to harm the planet. Why do we persist.

Band of sketchers first drawing

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in SketchingTagged Back garden, Back yard, Band of sketchers, Distance, Drawing, Fun, Life, Plants, Sketching, Stoke-on-Trent2 Comments

A ggrou of us have decided to keep running sketching challenges but not in our local urban sketching group. This is because not everyone sticks to the urban sketchers rules and we were also clogging up the gallery with some strange and interesting images, but not necessarily outside.

Today’s challenge was distance. I saw some people have drawn landscapes with far away landmarks, but I interpreted it differently….. I in my case I drew my friends back yard. With plants growing up the wall and in pots at the rear of her house. First of a new set of ideas….

Owl

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Animal rescue, Digital art, Digital drawing, Drawing, Environment, Life, Nature, Owl, Sketch, Sketchfu8 Comments

Clearing up my photos on my phone I decided to delete and optimise them. It jumbled up the ones I left behind. I loved drawing this on the sketchfu website that has since closed so don’t go looking for it.

I love owls, we have visited owl sanctuaries and animal sanctuaries. I just love the patterns on their feathers, and the fact that most of them fly silently. Their eyes are amazing. Staring at you like they are pinning you to the ground like a small rodent!

Cushions

Posted on August 31, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blogging., Couch, Cushions, Life, Random, Settee, Sitting, Soft furnishings2 Comments

What is it about cushions? I suppose they support your back or your head, but sometimes you end up with too many. Not because you bought them. Not all of them, some are presents, some were going to be presents for others, but you failed to give them in time. Then they just stayed, sitting on the couch, waiting for the chance to be used when a friend stops on the settee for the night, or to be hugged hard when watching horror films. Holding the cushion up to blank out nasty scenes….

Slow

Posted on August 31, 2020August 31, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Annoying, blocks, Blogging, Frustrating, Irritated, Life, Poem, Poetry, Slow, WordPressLeave a comment

Slow connection

Slow to load,

Blocks are irritating

Words don’t work.

Finding my footing

Muddling through

Finding it painful

To work it out.

Don’t try spaces

Don’t type lines,

Everything jumps

And moves around.

Poems in WordPress

blocks are hard to do.

Cat integration isn’t going well.

Posted on August 31, 2020August 31, 2020 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Abandoned cat, Blogging, Boy cat, Cat, Girl cat, Integration?, Life2 Comments

Hubby decided it would be a good idea to bring the outside cat in, so he bought it into the living room. But it was not happy and struggled out of his grip. Our boy cat followed him as he’s friendly, but the outside cat turned round and hissed and swiped at him. I showed him where the cat flap was. He scarpered. Then as our female cat came to look at what was happening by the backdoor the abandoned cat lashed out again, this time from outside the cat flap. Result three confused and upset cats! So next time we will try a more gentle integration.

Sun fire

Posted on August 31, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Blogging, Digital drawing, Fire, Life, Paintings, SunLeave a comment

This popped up in my memories on Facebook and I remember doing four of these, Earth, Fire, Water, Air in ArtRage oils, but I can’t find the other three. I did them as companion pieces to four acrylic on canvas paintings of the same subjects that are in my studio down at spode which I really need to start going back to now things are a little more normal.

I’d like like to do some illustrations for a child’s book using ideas like this. Anyone interested?

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Life