I’m bored

Posted on January 31, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Books, Bored, Boring, Closed, Drawing, Ill, Memory, Mind, remember, shut, Sundays, Tea, Years ago2 Comments

Fed up with being ill. Not Covid, but a cold/ chest infection. But I’m getting bored. I feel trapped but that might be a good thing. Perhaps I’m getting better?

Sundays used to be boring when I was a child. Nowhere was open, shops shut, nothing really to visit. If you ran out of milk you could not buy any. Memory of a different world. Time changes things. Then I was waiting for fruit salad with evaporated milk with bread and butter for tea. Watching my mom and dad doing the washing in a boiler in the kitchen that had a mangle on the top and an old spin dryer to get most of the water out. While they did that we played in the garden. Unless the weather was bad. Then I would read a book, or draw. Maybe it wasn’t all that boring?

How do I draw from imagination?

Posted on January 28, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Drawing, Imagined, Life, Memory, Park, Pencil sketch, reconstruction, Sketching, Time9 Comments

How do I draw from imagination? I talk and think my way through things, by describing how they should look in my mind or verbally helps to make me think more about details of the image I’m drawing.

For example, this drawing was based on a memory of my walks in a local park as a child. There were trees that seemed to have faced in them. They were probably Ash trees, they seemed to have long spidery branches with tipped up ends like fingers. The path wandered around past stone walls that I used to balance on. Behind me was a play area with a slide, swings and a roundabout and seesaw. This is a memory drawing so it isn’t exactly accurate and things have probably changed a lot. I haven’t been back for years. But the face in the tree gives me a bit of a feeling of nervousness I used to get as a child.

Sketchbooks

Posted on January 25, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Cafe, Fun, Memory, Picture, Prestatyn, Sketching, tea shop, Teddy bears, WalesLeave a comment

I just found this photo, and my mind is taken back to a Sunday afternoon in Prestatyn, Wales. We were visiting family and decided to call in here to have a coffee and cake. The place was part cafe, part second hand shop. The window ledges were covered in succulents (money plants). I remember a huge Teddybear on one side of the room with a big nose. A teapot sign hung in the window. The cafe was near the railway station.

Taking a sketchbook out helps me remember places, it gives me a reference point, and as it takes time to draw the image its not like a photo, it’s got less information but you can choose how it looks (miss things out, add things).

I don’t always remember my sketch books, but when I do, and I have the time to draw or paint I really enjoy it.

Willow pattern banner

Posted on January 25, 2022 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, banner, Design, Life, Memory, Painting, penkhull mystery plays, Potteries, Spode, Time, Willow pattern9 Comments

A banner for one of our Penkhull Mystery Plays. We hold them most summers and the one this was painted for was about the pottery industry and its history. This banner was based on the willow pattern famous in the potteries. Spode was one of the factories that made plates and pots with this design, but if you Google ‘willow pattern’ you can find lots of images from many manufacturers.

Blue acrylic paint on a canvas cloth. It took me a while to paint. I also painted the local church and methodist Hall as they would have appeared in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Memory of devon

Posted on January 19, 2022 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Devon, Dolphin, Holiday, Memory, missing portrait, pod oof dolphins, Portrait, Sea, Swimming, Water, wild mammal5 Comments

I once swam with a wild dolphin, we’d been driving round Devon and came back to the seaside to find a crowd of people on the beach and a group in wetsuits about fifty yards out. They were all excited and we saw a pod of dolphins swimming away. But one stayed in the bay. I decided I would swim out a bit and got in the sea fully clothed minus my shoes and glasses. My hubby stayed on the beach. The dolphin swam backwards and forwards between the two groups of people. Because I was in the middle he ket swimming close to me. It was fascinating. He kept coming past me and I noticed large wounds on his sides. It was after half an hour of being near him that I saw he was male! I can only say that it was quite alarming and not at all spiritual!. The next day there was a sign up about him at the camp site. He was called Georges and he was an adolescent male. His scars were because he would get too close to boat propelers. It also said not to breathe near them as they can transmit airborne diseases from their blowholes.

When I got home I did an imagined portrait of him but unfortunately the painting is at my sisters otherwise I would share a photo of him leaping through the waves. X

Wordless cartoon

Posted on January 14, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, campfire, Cartoon, College, Design, Fire, Fun, Life, Memory, Sketching, Snake, TimeLeave a comment

I can’t remember the story behind this or whether there was a prompt. I drew it last year. I had to draw something with four panels for my college course. It starts with someone by a campfire. The fire goes out so they go to get more wood, But instead of it all being sticks, a snake, which had been asleep wakes up. I like the simple style I drew it in and the minimal images in it. But now I look back at it I worry that the snake would have been burned or might have woken up before being put on the embers. Even with a simple story you have to be aware of consequences!

How lucky

Posted on January 10, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Beach, caravan, Childhood, Eyesight, Glasses, Life, Lost, lucky, Memory, optician, Thinking, ViewLeave a comment

How lucky to have glasses, to be able to see. I didn’t always wear glasses. My poor eyesight was only picked up in eye screening at school. I don’t remember things being blurred or hard to see. Did I sit at the front of the class? I don’t know. I remember my first glasses. They had beautiful blue frames. I learnt to be patient as the optician looked into the back of my eyes. Shining a light so I could see the blood vessels reflected somehow onto my retinas.

Rugby ball shaped eyes were the diagnosis. Short sighted. Suddenly I could see the world clearly. I felt freed from a struggle I did not know I had been going through. I only realised how bad my eyesight was when I learnt to swim. I couldn’t wear my glasses in the swimming pool and I could not recognise my friends unless they came close.

Now I understand why I got lost on a beach a few years before! I could not see my family when I wandered off. And why I got lost on a caravan site. I could not see the numbers on the vans…. Yes I am lucky. I wish others could be too…

Two hours to go

Posted on December 31, 2021 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Black and white cat, Cat, Fear, Fireworks, Loud, Memory, New year, Robin, Scared, Tuxedo cat, two hours2 Comments

Not really clock watching, but the neighbours just let off a lot of very loud fireworks and it’s nowhere near midnight yet! Two of the cats were out. One ran in, tail all fluffed up, but the other (big) one is still out! I shouted a few times but he didn’t come in. Hubby went looking, no sign. I just hope he wsdnt too scared. Did I say they were loud? About twenty rockets, one after another. I wish people would consider pets. And if they are going to let them off choose quiet ones. I still remember being at my mom’s house one new years eve. Some fireworks went off and we looked out of the front door… Suddenly a Robin flew in and upstairs! It would not go out until the fireworks stopped!

Painting from college

Posted on December 31, 2021 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Art, boyfriend, College, Fine Art, Hubby, Life, Memory, Oil on canvas, Painting, Portrait, SnowLeave a comment

This is a painting I did when I was about twenty. I was at college doing my fine art degree and I had recently met my then boyfriend (now hubby). This was in my small studio at college. The painting has been on the wall for several years. I painted him sitting on a chair with his feet up. He hasn’t changed too much.

Outside there was snow lying on the hills above the city. You could just see the roofs of the college across the road. The rooms we worked in were reasonably light. I remember the studios upstairs had parquet flooring. It was a different world from what I came from. I’m glad I went.

Deleting photos again.

Posted on December 28, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 98%, Art, deleted, Full, Images, Life, limited memory, Memory, Photos, Storage, TimeLeave a comment

This was the neighbours leylandii trees a couple of years ago. I think I wrote a post about the shock of seeing them being chopped down. They were very big, taller than the neighbours house and right next to it, but I don’t think trees should go.

But then, my media files were over 98% full tonight. The tree photo and several more have had to go. And yet I’m preserving this here… But just to make the point. The blog post is still there. Its too much of a challenge to remove them.

So if you see posts without photos (almost all of them do have my own artwork), I apologise but I want to keep this going…

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Memory