Sketches from 2004. The main drawing was a friend and I think the other two were practice faces. I draw faces less now. I try and draw them convincingly but I think you can get tied down into the same lines, the same shapes. It’s hard to break through muscle memory when you have drawn and painted for more than fifty years! I must say I owe a debt to my mom who let me go to college instead of insisting I got a job at the end of my time at school. That time was instrumental in making me the artist I am! X
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was destruction. The Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, was destroyed by fire just a few weeks ago. This is a sketch from a photo by Stokie Bloke (I can’t face visiting the Leopard Hotel). Not very accurate. You can see the roof has gone. There were more photos including the room where my murals were. The walls are still standing, but there are just blank ashy grey spaces. So sad.
I want to know the future, that people will be safe in their homes, that war will not escalate. I try and be positive, but a few men (and it is mainly men) have most of the power in this world. The rest of us are not involved in those decisions, we are just along for the ride.
What can people do? Protest, take action, or is acquiesce all we can do to save lives? Who can tell?
I kept some of the images I created on my old Nokia phone when I changed. I was really happy with the flood fill option it had because there were different patterns and textures instead of just basic colours. The green areas were finger painted onto the screen. It was fun to use and created some interesting effects.
The trouble with blogging is that you make friends and then after a while they might disappear. Suddenly they go into the fog of the Internet. It’s not clear if something has happened to them or if they have just left. Thankfully people do write and say they are going sometimes. That’s not as bad. But it leaves a hole in your life when you’ve got used to reading their words. You can go back and look at previous posts but it’s not the same. Or you can find them on other platforms. I remember finding someone on Instagram after they had left here. But a few months later they left there as well.
It’s also a shock when after losing touch with people over the years you find out they have died. It happened last weekend, someone I had known for a while had passed away. I asked her husband how she was and he said she had died two years ago. He said everyone in the town knew she had passed away. I had to explain that I don’t live in that town so had not found out. I was so sad to have discovered she was gone.
The worst thing I think is Facebook memories. Someone who has died will suddenly appear on a memory. Or their birthday will show up. It can be disturbing. There should be a memorial button. A way of closing an account without erasing them. Meanwhile. If I decide to leave WordPress I will try and remember to let people know. X
From May 2020, when I first started my part time illustration course. I am still quite pleased with this drawing. Physically, I was fitter and could draw without shaking too much. I tend to add less details these days too. I’d like to get back to drawing outside. Maybe meet up with urban sketchers again. Even though I havent caught Covid, it’s done things to me mentally. I guess I got a bit of cabin fever during lockdown, and since then it’s been easier to avoid people – you never know if you will just burst into tears… I think I’m OK, god knows what its like for people living through wars or famine. We can still do things here, well some of us can. I worry for people in food poverty or who can’t afford to heat their homes. It all spins round in my head. which is why I’m writing this at 3.11am…. must go to bed.
In the second world war and afterwards they had ordinary people just writing down their everyday lives in diaries. They were collated to record what had happened. There is a film called “Housewife 55” or something like that, which starred Victoria Wood. If you can find it, it’s worth watching, very poignant. maybe they were their own kind of bloggers.
My hubby was brought up on farms and remembers the byres and barns of Yorkshire and Lancashire. His childhood was spent between going to school and working on farms in the summer holidays. When he was old enough he would even drive tractors. His father was a farm labourer and went from farm to farm following the seasonal work. Sometimes hubby fed cattle, other times he helped plough or harvest crops. They even raised day old chick’s in the attic of their house.
It sounds like a hard life, but an interesting one. He did this drawing of a tractor a few years ago. There are ducks, lambs and yes that’s meant to be a cow. X
Our college exhibition in 1978, a few of us got in the local paper. One image was painted in quink ink on paper and the other one was larger on a canvas. I don’t remember what happened to them. I may have left them at the school of art. Even now I still remember the fun I had painting them. I wish I could go back in time to those days again. I don’t know if they still sell quink ink. When you added water to the black colour it would split into browns and blues. Great for painting cloudy skies
Mallaband-Brown 