Sleepy

Posted on August 22, 2020August 22, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Dreaming, Dreams, Fun, Humour, Life, Sleep, Sleepy, Tired4 Comments

I keep nodding off, falling asleep, almost in mid sentence. Stayed up too late for the last three nights. Going to bed at three or four am. I was trying to get my coursework done, but I’ve fallen into a bad habit of going to bed late and getting up late. I keep having interesting dreams, in them I’m at university walking through rooms and lecture halls, I’m doing a distance learning course, but clearly I want to go there. Can barely keep my eyes open. I keep having to check my grammar and writing. I nod off as I’m typing sometimes. Wake up to gibberish. V V g g kg v”fcggffvb or something like that.

I might try and write something else. But what? What do people want to hear? I don’t know. Brains running on empty….

Clarice Cliff mural

Posted on August 22, 2020August 22, 2020 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Art deco, Burslem, Ceramics, Clarice Cliff, Design, Leopard closed, Life, Mural, My murals, Stoke-on-Trent Staffordshire, The Leopard Hotel, Umbrella designLeave a comment

This the mural I painted at the Leopard of Clarice Cliffs Umbrella design. It is one of several murals I did. They were painted directly onto the walls, but as the original room had several large squares and oblong of flock wallpaper surrounded by wooden framing, the owners stripped the flock paper and covered the patches with lining paper. I then painted on that. For some reason people think the pictures are painted on canvas. They will get a shock if they try and take them down. They would have to remove a layer of plaster probably too…!

Sketching tutors

Posted on August 22, 2020August 22, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Black and white, Blogging, Cross hatching, Drawing, Ink sketches, Life, People, Portraits, Quick sketches, Sketching, Webinar2 Comments

When you are in a webinar and you are listening to people talking, why not sketch them? I don’t get much chance of doing portraits of people at the moment and so I take them when I can. Our webinars require students to have their mic and camera switched off, and only switching the mic on if you want to say something. When you are in a group of up to forty students I guess it makes it easier to hear what’s being said and it’s less distracting. I make notes, but I can’t help wanting to draw…

So if you are ever in a zoom meeting with me… Beware I might do a quick sketch of you too!

No don’t use your computer hooman!

Posted on August 21, 2020August 21, 2020 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Cat, Funny, Humour, Jump, Keyboard, Laughter, Life, Poem, Poetry4 Comments

I will sit here hooman

Till you notice me.

You can’t type here hooman.

I won’t let you see!

If you use your keyboard,

If you touch your mouse,

I will chase the wires

Dance upon the desk.

Watch out I am jumping

On the computer keys,

Padding up and down them

Hooman- I’m here. Please,

Take some notice off me

Don’t ignore the cat,

Or I’ll press a button

And Delete all that!

Bathroom sketch, urban sketchers

Posted on August 21, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #uskstoke, Art, Bathroom, Drawing, Five thirty am, Life, Picture, Quick draw, SketchingLeave a comment

Five thirty am Friday. Had a frantic day yesterday getting my stuff submitted to college. Followed by a five mile walk (not walked that far for years), then called in Sawadee Thai taste for a snack so didn’t get home till late. My legs are aching so much it woke me up. Don’t have any pages left in sketchbooks so drew this on a blank card.

Thursdays prompt was bathroom or bedroom for urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent challenge. Well I’m late because it’s Friday. But at least I did something. Note to self buy more sketchbooks.

I am learning

Posted on August 19, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blogging, Er?, Learning, Life, Tags keep disappearing, Thinking, You?4 Comments

Have to say I’m still irritated with WordPress, everything seems so slow. Pages take ages to load, but I’m going through the same process over and over again to find a path through the new editor. I keep taking wrong turns, looking for tags that don’t seem to exist once I’ve posted them. How are you all doing? Am I getting on your nerves?

Finding things to draw.

Posted on August 19, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Black and white, Cafe, Drawing, Ink drawing, Life, Meeting, Portrait, SketchingLeave a comment

No Urban sketchers challenge today so I drew a friend (we met in a cafe to discuss art today), it’s not a brilliant because I got the eyes and nose too big. You can see the grain of the paper, it’s a handmade sketch book and the paper is thicker than I normally draw on. It’s grey because the day was very overcast. This was taken with a light on, but it didn’t illuminate the photo very well. It was good to draw a person again

The other one

Posted on August 17, 2020August 17, 2020 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Bathroom, Boy cat, Chasing, Cool, Fun, Girl cat, Life, Mad half hour, Playing, SunshineLeave a comment

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Our boy cat having a stretch in the bathroom. He had been ill but he’s a lot better now. For the moment he sleeps in the bathroom on a towel because it’s a lot cooler in there. Not as much sun getting in. But sometimes I will find him in a patch of sunlight, curled up and warming himself. Cats have characters. He’s chilled. Our female cat is lively and loves chasing things. Sometimes they chase each other. A mad half hour. Then peace descends again.

Aurora

Posted on August 17, 2020August 17, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Astronomy, Blogging, Coronal Mass Ejections, Earth, Electrons, Energy, Ions, Life, North and South poles, Sky, Sun, Trying to understand AuroraLeave a comment

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The sun is starting to wake up after Solar Minimum. Apparently there was a coronal mass ejection from the sun yesterday. This means that a twisted magnetic line of energy had broken and exploded with plasma coming out of the Sun. The energy can fly out in any direction but sometimes the CME heads towards Earth, then the magnetic feild around the Earth shields us. Except at the poles. Its like when you put iron filings on a bar magnet. You can see the magnetic field lines and the way the iron filings follow them. The magnetic lines dip down towards the magnetic poles. This is what happens at the North and South poles of Earth. The energy from the sun is channelled towards the poles and excites the gasses in the atmosphere. I think Nitrogen glows green and Oxygen pink? I’m not sure.

Anyway there has been a CME from the Sun and the chance is there might be some Auroral displays in the next few days.

Almost a disaster!

Posted on August 17, 2020August 17, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Coursework, Disaster, Learning, Life, Luck, PowerPoint, Slides, Text, Word, WritingLeave a comment

I decided to type my work in PowerPoint because I struggled with word documents jumping around and the text ending up half way on one page and half on another.

PowerPoint relies on slides, so you have to fit your text into a space which is of limited size.

I’d created a new one and went to start typing, and bam! A page of text just disappeared. What? Where? For some reason I couldn’t see the back icon, I couldn’t restore the page! Panic!

Then I remembered that I had copied the text into a word document because I couldn’t find a word count on PowerPoint!

Phew. Restored slide. Lesson learnt. Now all I need to do is stop the cat jumping on the keyboard!

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Life