Badly drawn violinist

Posted on October 20, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Barn dance, Black and white, Dance, Drawing, Fun, Life, Penkhull, Penkhull mystery play, Penkhull Village Hall, Sketching, Staffordshire, Stoke-on trent, Urban Sketchers2 Comments

I did these sketches tonight because I’m part of urban sketchers. These were drawn at the Mystery play barn dance up at Penkhull village hall. The band laying were called the Shropshire Hero’s and the barn dance caller was Baz Parkes.

It was excellent fun although I was helping behind the bar for part of it. Just watching people dance was great. Some do well, others make mistakes. The worst thing that happened was someone accidentally stood on my foot. But that was because I was drawing, and I think I was a bit in the way, so I wasn’t looking and got stood on. I was more worried because the dancer almost fell over me!

The other problem with drawing dancers? You guessed it.. They don’t stand still!

Waiting for Spring.

Posted on October 19, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Autumn, Flowers, Garden, Gardening, Life, Spring, Sun, WarmthLeave a comment

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It’s Autumn and I’m already waiting for Spring! I need to work on the garden, cut shrubs back, plant tulip bulbs, plant snowdrops, then… Wait, wait, wait… Through the cold and rain, through the shirt dates and long nights.

I want to see the baby birds, the squirrel and its kits, the tadpoles in the pond (if we have frogs we must have tadpoles). I look forward to warmer, not too hot, days. Life returns.

In the winter here it usually does not get too cold. But it can be grey, wet and windy.

The clocks go back at the end of October, then the sun will go down an hour earlier, I hate sitting in the dark in the winter, trying to keep warm. Looking forward to the winter solstice when the sun starts coming back a little more every day.

☓

Panto

Posted on October 18, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Drama, Fun, Humour, Life, Panto, Pantomime, Penkhull, Play, Stoke-on trent, TheatreLeave a comment

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Have you heard of Panto? Or better known as Pantomime?

No? It’s something that goes on here in the UK around Christmas time.

Usually seen in a theatre it consists of brightly coloured sets, with brightly clothed people, messing about, telling an adventurous story while telling awful jokes and singing contemporary songs.

We do this in Penkhull, but for the at two years someone from the group has written the panto/pantomime, rather than buying in a script.

We started rehearsing last week. Lots of people who have done it before, greatful to get a couple of lines and be able to play act again. Most modern pantos seem to have commercial sponsorship, but in our case we just mention local shops. We don’t have advertisements in the panto, unless it’s jokey ones in the programme.

This time we are doing Aladdin. Set to open for four performances (too many for’s?) in February 2020, so the cast can take Christmas off!

Oh yes we can!

My cat

Posted on October 18, 2019 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Cat, Fun, Humour, Life, Micro poetry, Poem, Poetry, Tom catLeave a comment

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He’s big and bold,

Not nasty, but determined.

If he wants,

he will take your chair.

He will make fun of you,

Nip your nose

Play with your hair

Chase balloons.

Happy.

That’s what he is….

New glass pieces

Posted on October 18, 2019October 18, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Design, Dichroic, Fun, Glass, Glass art, Life, Trees2 Comments

These are new, about half the size of my original pieces. They are due to have holes drilled in them to allow smaller mounts.

These have bits of dichroic glass fused into them. I’m hoping they will be liked at the craft fair I’m doing soon.

Greif

Posted on October 18, 2019October 18, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blog, Grief, Life, Memories, Sad, Tears, Thinking2 Comments

I just unlocked some grief, from long ago. It was hidden deep, the reason why I don’t buy many clothes and shoes for myself.

Why I feel guilt, and hurt, sad to be left behindy by my dad.

Father died and we had nothing but his bequest to buy clothes for his funeral. That set up the guilt, Mom needed the money more than us. But she insisted, we had to be smart. Look nice. To choose our own outfits. I think that has always stayed with me. Grief and guilt mixed into a behaviour. Still sad now all these years later.

Guardian angel

Posted on October 17, 2019October 17, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Angel, Caring, Guardian, Life, Poem, Poetry, SupportLeave a comment

She stands, arms folded.

What have you done now?

She asks.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to

You say.

I will save you,

This time, she says.

(she says that every time, really)

Looking down from on high,

Looking down on you.

Guardian,

Angel,

Caring

Mother…..

Too many photos

Posted on October 16, 2019October 16, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blogging, Digital art, Editing, Images, Life, Memory, Posts, Too many photos4 Comments

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Anyone who follows my blog know I illustrate it with my own images and not stock illustrations. But my images are a bit too large and I keep getting memory too low messages again.

Previously I paid extra to get more memory, but I really can’t keep doing that. I am not sure how to reduce the image sizes so all I can do is delete pictures off my earlier posts here. I’m not taking them off the site pages, but from the blog posts. I’ve several thousand to go through, and I don’t think it will seriously impact on the posts….

The little Goldmine

Posted on October 16, 2019October 16, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Arthur Berry, Artist, Burslem, Charcoal, Fun, Humour, Life, Painter, Pastels, Stoke-on trent, writerLeave a comment

Saw this in Burslem today. On the main road from Cobridge up to Burslem.

Arthur Berry was an artist based in Stoke-on-Trent where he produced pictures of everyday figures and landscapes with a style of his own. Charcoal and pastels are used to chisel faces out of blackness, strokes of grey and white float on top of murky reds to bring out the dark shapes of buildings.

Arthur was also a writer and poet. We attended several of his plays when they were performed at the Victoria Theatre in Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent in the 1980’s. We have a copy of a couple of his books. He was a very creative artist.

Having a sketchbook

Posted on October 14, 2019October 14, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Black and white, Drawing, Ink pen, Landscape, Life, Sketchbooks, Sketches, Trees, Urban sketch2 Comments

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I’ve been taking my sketchbook with me recently because of doing the one inch drawing challenge. That’s meant that I have drawn pictures as well as photographing them.

Yesterday I was looking at autumn trees in front of black and white buildings (the architecture looks like its from the 1920’s or 30’s.) Sturdy, tall trees were starting to colour up as autumn starts to bite. The branches were swaying and soughing in the wind. This is a season I can relate too. It’s sometimes quiet and misty, other times dramatic. That’s what I enjoyed about drawing it. Trying to bring a bit of that drama into it. You can’t draw every individual leaf in a ten or fifteen minute sketch, but you can try and add movement.

For information I used an a6 sketchpad and a unipin fine line pen size 0.8.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Life