New paintings and regular art updates.
There used to be quite a basic drawing website called Sketchfu. These are drawings I did there and saved before the site closed around 2013?
Some of them were challenges to copy images that had been posted to the site. It was a good community and I’m proud to say I helped moderate it over quite a few years. All images are digital drawings by myself, not photos.
It’s sunny by the sofa and our tom cat never fails to find the sun. As the light moves across the room he will follow it. Eyelids drooping as he naps. Head nodding. Whiskers splayed in the sunlight. Plants display phototropism, bending towards sunlight. Is this an example of ‘catatropism’ (or would that be humans moving towards cats?).
In the case of these seedlings I have to turn them round because they bend each day towards the light. True phototropism. But the cat has also moved again. 
He’s a true sun seeker.
Wasp! I’ve stood on one and been stung before now. I don’t like them but I can live with them, except when they built a nest in between some bricks and started coming out into the kitchen when they emerged. I got up one morning and there were a few wasps flying round the kitchen. Two many to catch and I didn’t have any fly spray so I had to hoover them up in the vacuum cleaner. I felt guilty about it. Then over the next week we had more every morning. I had to book pest control in the end.
Now years later I just had a huge wasp fly into the living room. It must have come in from the garden when my partner went outside.
The cats ears pricked up and he started looking up and jumping onto cupboards to try and catch it. I don’t think chewed wasp would be good for him. Then it flew onto the window behind a net curtain.
I shouted my partner as I could not reach. A plastic tub and a magazine were used to trap it, now its free flying around outside.
Phew! Strange how insects can be so upsetting. Wasps are useful for eating pests and pollenation. And thankfully I didn’t have to vacuum it up!
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Little bandit kitten.
Grew up to be a big cat
Beautiful baby
So very sweet
Tiny paws, little claws
So soft,
Now slender and sleek
Kitten cat
Bandit cat
Black and white
So neat.
I came downstairs about an hour ago and the sweet, loud, melodious song of birds was filling the air. At this time of year in the spring it seems louder and more beautiful than ever. Fizzing through the air like ripe electricity. A great pleasure to listen to.
Then cutting through it the insistent alarm call, not of a blackbird, but a ruddy car alarm! The bird song quietened for about five minutes, a car engine started up in the street, and traffic noise commenced. But soaring high above it the melodies of a Blackbird and its mate have resumed. Liquid notes rising and falling in complicated trills… And that ruddy car alarm again!
A replica bottle oven is growing on the grounds of Spode at the moment. It’s going to be a pizza oven at the hotel on the Spode site.
Around the other side of Spode near the Church Street side is the base of an original bottle oven which had been demolished years ago. There are very few real ovens still standing in the city. Many were knocked down or fell into disrepair over the years. Where hundreds once stood and smoke stained the city sky less than fifty are still standing and many of these are in danger of being lost to the history of the city, county, and country.
Even now buddleia and other shrubs are growing in between their bricks, pulling the ovens down in continued dereliction. Hopefully some can be conserved.
For those who don’t know bottle ovens are bottle shaped buildings containing a central kiln which the oven surrounds. Pottery was stacked inside the kiln and fired by stoking fires under the ovens with coal.
I took these photos within minutes of each other. This is my painting chair where I prop up my canvases while painting at home. I’m between paintings at the moment so the cats often sit on it. The house is full of “stuff” that Mey or may not be used as subject matter. Hence this poem!
Cats and clutter, clutter and cats.
Do the two go together
Like mittens and bats?
Like bread and butter
Like lamb and spring
Grapes and wine
Cheese and bread?
We all live differently
Each to his own
Cats and clutter are in my home!
Charis Jones is a blacksmith and sculptor who runs Sculpted Steel at the Etruria Forge in Etruria Stoke-on-Trent. She is based in the Forge and can be contacted to commission sculptural work. She created a large cat sculpture for our garden.
This weekend she was demonstrating her skills during a steaming weekend at The Etruria Industrial Museum. Home of Jessie Shirley’s bone and flint mill.
The beam engine that powers the flint grinding pans is steamed about once a month.
As with other places in the potteries this is one of those hidden gems that people don’t know about but which are fascinating to visit
Photos courtesy my friend Lorraine.
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If you go into Longport in the potteries (Stoke-on-Trent) and turn off the main road towards the station you will find a new artists led gallery.
The place only opened up this weekend but they have had lots of visitors and sales. There is art by a number of local fine artists for sale. I could not resist asking if I can place some work there and maybe hold an exhibition there.
The gallery is across the road from a shop called cherished chimneys which sells ornamental chimney pots, there was also a sign for a teapot exhibition on another building, and the station building at Longport is also being used as a gallery.
Despite losing City if Culture for 2021 I think artists in the area are proving just what a cultural, artistic city we are.
You like our garden, stray cat,
You like my kitty cats food.
You like sitting on my
Soon to be erected shed!
You drink out of the pond,
Walk on wet concrete
And leave your 🐾 paw prints
Eat from picnic sandwiches
Sit on the benches
And deck chairs
Climb the trees
Chase the birds
Act like you own the place?
But then go home!
Mallaband-Brown