Helium balloon…

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I was given a Helium balloon by a friend for our anniversary and its gradually losing Helium as the days go by. Helium can escape because it has the second smallest atom in the periodic table, and can diffuse through the skin of the balloon. Helium is also inert so unlike Hydrogen that has the smallest atoms, it won’t burn. (Hydrogen on the other hand is very reactive and burns with Oxygen in the atmosphere to make water).

The balloon has gradually sunk in the air as its buoyancy has reduced. We gradually cut off the ribbon on it and as that reduced its weight it flew higher. Its also following air currents and drifted around the house. Rather like a drop of water floating in the international space station the balloon has drifted up and down the stairs. When it gets above a radiator it ascends, and when it drifts out of the warm air it descends again. At the moment it’s bobbing around the living room, like one of the giant bubbles in the 1960s series ‘the prisoner’….

A not very interesting anecdote…..

Done

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One more done….

I enjoyed doing this trying to make it ‘iconic’ got a robin painting to finish off. That should be finished tonight. Still more to do though. They will all need mirror plating. These are flat plates screwed onto the back of the paintings so they can be attached to the wall. I will also paint round the edges of each painting to make them look nice. This is called ‘gallery wrapping’. I do it because I can’t afford to frame all my paintings. It also means anyone buying a painting can choose what they want.

Reblogging?

It’s not something I do very often, I think blogs should really be your own work, but a couple of times just recently I have reblogged. The reason? Because I really liked them and they are discussing things I don’t know. In the case of the science blog there is so much more in it about Daylight saving time than I ever imagined and in the case of the blog about living in China, I will never visit anywhere like that and we should all be willing to learn about different cultures. I hope you agree.

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Red morning sky

I woke up to this red sky about half an hour ago. The sky is now more yellow and the sun is above the horizon. The light is streaming through the leaves and lighting them up. The red sky does not bode well for later on… Red sky in the morning shepherd’s warning (or sailors), but it certainly makes a breathtaking sight right in the heart of the city.

Sketcher Free

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I’ve got a new tablet and I’ve merrily been uploading some of the apps I used to use. This one was called sketcher free. I played with the various pens in the app and tried to create something a bit more abstract to how I normally draw.

I was also trying out different colours, vaguely graffitiish if that’s a word! Its exciting to experiment with art.

New ideas for paintings

They might not look like much yet, but I’ve just blocked in three small painting that I sketched out over the weekend. The middle one is of a cat curled up on an armchair. The chair will be covered in a holly pattern.the cat on the window ledge will have a blue and white vase next to it, and the pottery is an imagined view in the snow,

I’ve got a busy week so I might not be able to get online much. Also I’ve got toothache!

Drawing, squaring up

When you are learning to draw you can use a grid to help. If you are trying to copy an image you can draw a grid over the original, then draw the same sized squares on the paper you are drawing on. Finally copy the original onto the drawing by filling in each square. The grid helps you place lines more accurately. If you do the drawing in pen instead you can rub out the pencil lines. It’s really only a device to help learning to draw, or if you want to draw out the basis for a painting when you are using opaque paints like gouache, acrylics or oils. You can also use this for scaling up or down. If the squares are half size on the original the drawing will be twice the size (or vice versa), hope this makes sense.

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Ideas for paintings

Sketching designs for winter paintings that can still be good to have on the walls all year round. I’ve seen a painting with a pottery in the snow, so I’m going to do something similar with Holly and Ivy. The second idea is a cat on a windowledge with a blue and white vase next to it.

Will try and get them painted this week.

I don’t remember…

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I don’t remember it happening. It must have been long ago, before the sky fell, before the Mirohs arrived. When I was young?

The world had been burning, literally, fires everywhere. Ice melting. One day it was cold, the next boiling hot.

I don’t remember the day we reached 3..

Three degrees of global heating. They had said two was bad, but we got it even hotter. The seas won’t rise. My Mom told me that, it will never happen said Dad.

It’s all a blur. Running from the sea, trying to find homes in the hills. Millions crushed in the cities that were not on rivers…

They could have called it the great flood, but the papers said the sky was falling. What it meant was the rains and storms, so heavy they flattened towns in seconds, crops died. We started growing rice in paddy fields, it was the only way to get some sustenance in all the wet, dank weather.

Two years of hell passed. I was growing up and worked in the fields. All of the children worked. No schools, just back breaking work, bending and shoveling.

We hated it, but we were not  polluting anymore. Life seemed to pause and take a breath…

Then the Mirohs came, an alien race. We saw their ship, huge, like a great storm cloud. They looked down at us. Like bugs we were to them. Then the killing started. The message, you didn’t care for your precious planet. So we will take it. Humanity is a pestilence. They put something in the water. Now no one can have children. In a hundred years or so…. We will be gone.

Will anyone remember us?