New paintings and regular art updates.
I found an old sketchbook I used to take to a drawing group about 15years ago. I used to concentrate on portraits.
This was at a local pub and over a few years the group grew. It couldn’t last sadly as the pub closed down.
It was good to find these today. I need more sketchbooks though!
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I posted this and other photos to my Instagram page and a friend commented that they looked like views out of an airplane window of the sea with islands in it.
I had concentrated on trying to see animals in the image. I can see a snarling bears head at the top left of this one for instance. But it reminded me of a holiday in Dorset one year. Driving up over the hills of the county, just before we dropped down towards Weymouth on the coast, the sky looked like mountainous islands with sea, bays and inlets running through them. I wish I’d been able to take a photo…
The sky had been a pale wash of pastel colours, the sun was setting, but because we were heading due south its glare was catching the sides of the clouds, they were lit up with gold on one side and greys on the other. The ‘sea’ was all pale pinks and blues. If we had not spent all day driving I would have pulled over. The image faded as we headed towards the caravan site, but it was the precursor of a lovely week away. Maybe I can find some old snaps of the places we visited.
I often look at cloudscapes and see landscapes.
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In February I was painting scenery and props for our local pantomime, Aladdin.
We were acting in front of about 140 people for four performances. One on Thursday and Friday, and a double performance including a matinee on Saturday. To think just a couple of weeks later we were in lockdown. I saw hundreds of people over those few days, and then no one for three months except on the way to and back from the shops.
I wish I could go back in time? Go back to a time where there was laughter. Fun, silly jokes, time to be with friends. Life was much less worrying then, despite global warming and pollution! I wonder what will happen when things return to normal if they do?
One of my cats kittens from three years ago, popped up on my Facebook page a few weeks ago. She was rehomed with her sister and they are grown up and happy. We are thinking about taking in another adult stray cat, but he needs checking over at the vets, and my male cat is going to the vets for treatment in the morning. Life is complicated. Then if my cat is OK I need to find out about treatment, tablets, worst case scenario.
Oh dear.
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Ride a white horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.
I’ve started to remember old nursery rhymes…
See saw Margary Door,
She shall have a new master
She shall earn but a penny a day.
Because she can’t work any faster.
They just popped into my head. They are things I used to recite or sing to myself when I was about six or seven.
I’ve asked my hubby and he remembers
“if you stand on a nick, you’ll marry a brick and a beetle will come to your wedding’.
And ‘I wish I was a wooly worm, with wool upon my tummy, into a honey pot I’d squirm, and make my tummy gummy!,”
Nostalgia!
There was a couple, Mr and Mrs Opie that collected them and they lived in Salford, near Manchester, England. There is a whole collection of this type of verse there. I only remember this vaguely. They worked out that a rhyme could travel from the south up to the north of the country (Britain) in a week because of children repeating them. If I remember rightly. But I am getting older.
I can remember before decimalisation in the UK when money came in LSD, (pounds, shillings and pence) if you bought an icecream cone it might be 6d, which meant you paid a sixpenny piece or two thrupences 3d.
This picture is after decimalisation. Because the prices, like 6p have the new letter. I remember sixpence old money was 2 1/2 pence in new money (we actually had coins marked as ‘new pence’).
Oh how times change! Dracula and Dalek ice lollies! I think they still sell funny faces though. As they say ‘I scream you scream, we all scream for ice-cream!’
A train ground signal! Why? It cost £60, he got £5 off. Again Why? He’s going to hang it up in a tree and put a light behind it… Railway memorabilia from the 1960’s…He did have a garden railway but the track got covered by plants.
Men are strange, but I guess women are too. Some go out and spend lots on makeup or shoes. I think I’m just weird. I’ve never been that bothered…
I don’t know what will happen to his train signal. I guess eventually it will rust. But it’s made him happy… Ah well…. At least he’s not into football!
17.4.20, after I had drawn for thirty days with Stoke Urban Sketchers, and I guess at that stage I thought we wouldn’t be in lockdown for long. Our government, and in particular our prime minister was giving out optimistic press conferences saying that we should be able to get over it pretty lightly. I think he even said it was like some sort of flu? Of course things didn’t go that well for us, and now over 42 thousand people have died from covid 19 in the UK. Its almost like the government thought we would be immune with our “stiff upper lips” and “gung-ho” mentality. Clearly they were wrong.
So here we are. How many more drawings will I do before it’s safe to go out properly and not just dash to the shops to get essentials. Who knows when that will be?
First of the season, fresh strawberries and extra thick cream (saves having to whip it). Added a tiny bit of sweetener on to the strawberries. I have one that doesn’t have a bitter aftertaste.
When I was young we used to go and pick our own strawberries. You would spend ages in a field searching under leaves to find the berries. Often they were padded underneath the plants with straw to keep the berries from trailing on the ground. I think that’s where they got their name? Summer days when most of the strawberries missed the punnet and fell into our mouths instead. When music by the beatles played out of little transistor radios.
And when we got home? Strawberries with either single cream and white sugar. Or if we hadn’t got cream in, evapourated milk… Heaven…
A couple of years ago we saw a Dalek on a station (I think it was Froghall) in the Staffordshire moorlands. Memory fades, but I know I had a short video of it perambulating backwards and forwards along the platform. I remember looking for who was running it. The original ones on TV in the sci-fi series Doctor Who, were moved by people inside the Daleks, pedalling them along.
This one was being moved by a remote control I think. I saw a man with a radio controller in his hand. Later we went to look at a model Tardis in the station itself. Tardis stands for Time and relative dimensions in space. Anyone who is a Doctor Who fan would know that.
It’s not often that you bump into an iconic 1960’s TV character in real life.
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Mallaband-Brown