It didn’t happen
No rose
No wine
No sweet kiss
Just your presence
Missed.
Unvalentines day
Tag: Memory
“She wants to be an artist”
If there was a biography about you, what would the title be?
If someone wrote a biography of me it would be about my art I think.
But I have a lot of lights hidden under a bushel. Lots of knowledge about different things, science, music, nature, history. I’m definitely one of those “Jack of all trades”, I seem to absorb information and retain it.
I can remember songs I haven’t heard for years. Name most of the bones in the body and know where they are located. I’ve had various jobs and worked for over twenty years for one company. I won a student award whilst studying on a college course. I’m reasonably good at using computers in this digital age. I believe I’m well read, but know my knowledge is not all consuming.
But, what gets me really going is art, ancient and modern. I love skill and technical ability, but also innovation and experimentation. I think I have good expertise at art. I must have done much more than 10,000 hours as a painter. But I can still learn. Education and thought are important. That’s me.
Stamp collecting
Many years ago I joined a stamp collecting club. I don’t know if it was Stanley Gibbons? But every month you got sent sets of stamps in the post to add to your stamp album. I remember the gummed paper that you used to stick them in the album with. Or you could get albums with cellophane over the top of the page to hold the stamps in place.
I remember Noytia CCCP, Greek stamps, ones from Australia, Magya Posta, some British and American ones. As someone with an artistic eye I used to admire them. I loved the colourful ones. Ones with interesting perforations, old ones and different languages printed on them.
Talking to another WordPresser has bought them back into my mind. I remember leaving home for college as a young woman and giving my collection to my sister who also had stamps. I don’t know what happened to them. They might still be somewhere?
I remember using tweezers to pick them up carefully. The enjoyment of looking through the album. The excitement of waiting for stamps that I had ordered. Oh what memories!
#bandofsketchers again
This #bandofsketchers prompt was collection. Well I tried to remember my old glass marble collection! I still have some somewhere. In a bowl I think. Drawn in my sketchbook app, I used a stylus, but I’m very shaky today so the lines are a bit wobbly. Do you have a collection?
Frodo portrait
Another digital portrait I did on the Sketchfu site. I’m quite pleased that I could use simple tools and create images like this it’s sketchy round the edges because you could only use set sizes of pens, there was no sliding scale of thickness. But there was a good pallette, opacity and transparency tools so I could blend colours to some extent. This is based on a photo of Frodo from the Lord of the Rings film. He is holding his sword Sting.
I don’t know where this came from?
It’s the sort of photo I’d take, but I don’t remember it? It might be something that’s on my phone from a WhatsApp post, so if it is apologies to the owner. I’ve posted this here because I’m a member of a group called the peeling paint appreciation society on Facebook. Some of their images are amazing. I do wonder if some have had the saturation and sharpness enhanced. I feel like I should look out for more interesting images.
First haircut since lock down!
My friend came round and gave my hair a trim today (another friend has also offered).
I was sitting in my dressing gown keeping warm, when a friend rang up. Do you want a haircut? I thought about it. Yes why not. She arrived twenty minutes later with scissors and comb. Ten minutes later and I felt lighter and neater. No fuss with washing and drying, no conditioner. I’d washed my hair already. I tried cutting my fringe (why do Americans call a fringe bangs?) but I couldn’t really see it properly so she finished it off.
Midway through the cut another friend rang, so I rang her back and chatted about this and that. All the company tired me out, but I’m glad they got in touch. Now I’m surrounded by hungry cats. A reason to go shopping in a bit. Life, you can’t always hide.
Deaths
How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?
When someone close dies you realise how fragile life is. They can be there one day and gone the next. You then realise the same can be the situation for yourself.
I’m changing my perspective on life, I am not so blasé about it. It’s become precious to me and I want to hold on to it with both hands. I’m not exactly scared of dying, but life is far too interesting to give up on it yet. I’m a very stubborn person and I love a lot of people. They have helped me immensely in the last few months and I owe a lot to them.
I also want to try and enjoy art again. There must be something more I can do. There are lots of ideas in my mind that I would like to get out. I can’t control everything, and sometimes I am very anxious about things, I feel like I am a bit of a recluse now. Easier to hide. But I need to challenge myself and live.
My first computer experience
Write about your first computer.
My experience of computers was non existent when I was at college in the ’80’s. I went to an exhibition in a gallery and I remember being faced with a screen that said type ‘hello world!’ Or something similar and you would get a nice surprise.. So I typed:
Hello world
Nothing happened
I typed:
Hello world
Hello world
Hello world…
Over and over, the instructions soon disappeared off the top of the screen. I was frustrated, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to get back to the start. I didn’t know how to scroll back up the screen.
I gave up. Nowhere in the instructions did it say ‘press the enter key’!
It took me a few years before I bothered with a computer again.
Power cut fixed phone
My landline stopped working a few months ago, no matter what I did I couldn’t delete the saved messages and calls. It just said another handset was in use (I don’t have one?).
I had been to the local store to see if they had a similar device, but there was too much choice and I didn’t know what would work as none seemed to have the features I wanted.
Then this morning an alarm went off across the road. This usually signifies a power failure. But my landline phone beeped… I investigated. It said it was synchronising, when it stopped I checked and I could delete everything, calls and answerphone logs. It no longer says Full. I tried ringing it. For the first time in months it rang. Now all I need to do is make sure the memory doesn’t get full. And now I just need to reset the clocks on my stove and alarm clock!
Mallaband-Brown 