Next Saturday

Orme Art Group is having a Spring Artisan sale. There’s going to be a variety of stalls, from wire weaving, soft furnishing and painting and prints. I hope to be demonstrating minature painting, and selling some of my mini works. I also have a few glass necklaces for sale.

I don’t do craft fairs very often anymore, I went off them when covid was (still is) about and I’ve had to pluck up courage to do it again. I like space around me, not crowds, but this will be with friends so I should be OK.

The Whitfield Centre is a community centre and the people there are very friendly. I hope visitors will be impressed by the variety of work for sale and I hope we get a good attendance.

Three new?

Enjoyed starting a few paintings today at the Orme Art Group after turning up with no reference photos, I forget to take my phone and it has some flower photos I was going to use! Thanks to a lady called Steph for letting me borrow her pictures.

These are only daubed in… I will go over them and add details later. I started one little canvas but I didn’t want to muddy the colours so I started another picture, then another. I’m hoping these all have a feeling of atmosphere. I want them to look misty and damp.

Painting and drawing

What do you wish you could do more every day?

I used to paint and draw a lot more than I do now. I feel though that recently I’m quite blocked, stuck, nervous of creating. Yes I sketch every couple of days, but my easle is resolutely empty. The paints in their boxes, the brushes lying fallow. The trouble is my physical health. My left arm keeps shaking and I have pain in my elbow. I’m still waiting for a full diagnosis. I don’t think it’s anxiety, but not painting makes me anxious….

I just saw a painting/art competition online, but the entry needs to have been created after 1st January 2023. The painting I had in mind, and it was a good one, was from a couple of years ago, so it was not suitable. Also the entry date is tomorrow, I’m not going to have time unless I get my paints out NOW and paint all night..

I have a list of paintings to do for friends and family. I feel oppressed by that. I should feel glad. I need to break the block.

Need more….

My craft stall

I’m running out of minature paintings, I’ve sold a few and given some as presents. They are all different and I need to paint some more. What to paint? I’ve done anything from a Morris minor car to the planet Jupiter. I’ve also painted the moon, birds, flowers, hearts, patterns and giraffes in the sunset. Cats of course and stained glass windows.

They are more craft than fine art I think, but if someone wants a tiny painting, matchbox sized, they don’t need much space to display it! It can go on a shelf or a bookcase, or anywhere else. They are not expensive despite the time it takes to paint them. I just love sharing art.

Need to take better photos…

Three pottery paintings I did a few years ago. The one of the jug is going to a new home soon. ❤️

I took them to a joint performance of our Clay chorus and the Starfish choir because we were singing a song about the Willow pattern (this is based on a Spode platter) and also a ship called Hispaniola bringing pottery clay from across the seas that had been written for us by Mark Whitter. I was very proud to have my work appreciated.

I am making cards from these if I can so I need better photos to show them clearly .

Jupiter’s pole

Probably my most abstract image, actually me trying to paint one of the poles of Jupiter taken by the Juno probe a few years ago. It just popped up in my Facebook memories. I find blending difficult for paintings like this. Acrylic dries to quickly to get a fluffy feel to the clouds. I might revisit this and add a bit more to it.

Mill

Small ‘Mill’ painting sold.

It was very good to hear that my small painting of Etruria Flint Mill had sold to a friend yesterday. It was another in a new style I am experimenting with. I’m using more lines and textures to emphasise  the patterns in the bricks and sky and trees. The image is based on a photo of the Mill and Industrial Museum, but I added more white to give a feeling of when it was in use, and the site was dusted with the crushed bones and flints that went into Stoke-on-Trents bone China, their attempt to replicate Porcelain. The canal is brown with rusty water. If you visit Kidsgrove which is to the North of Stoke you can see the canal there is often very orange. The Trent and Mersey canal runs through the Harecastle Tunnel which is another interesting part of our industrial heritage.

I have other work for sale at Arts and Minds Gallery at Harper Street in Middleport opposite Middleport Pottery, Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

#motion

One of the art groups I’m part of put a prompt of #motion on their Facebook page today. I thought of this painting. Acrylic on canvas called Georges from a few years ago. A painting from memory of when I jumped in the sea fully clothed and swam out to a wild dolphin at Challaborough? In Devon. There were people on the beach and people in wetsuits further out. Georges kept swimming past me because I was somewhere in the middle. He’d got lots of scars along his body. I found out from a poster the next day telling people not to swim with him as he was too friendly and had been cut by boat propellers. You can also catch illnesses like pneumonia from breathing the air from their blowhole.

New ideas?

I’ve just been to the gallery where II have some of my paintings today. I thought they would be asking me to take some of my paintings away because they have been up too long, but they only wanted me to take one of a poppy field. But I do need to do some new paintings, to swap out with the ones I currently have there. I’m trying to think of spring images, maybe flowers? This is a Vinca. I was also thinking of doing a painting of a Blue himalayan poppy (mecanopsis) or other similar ones like Helibores. Also maybe snowdrops or daffodils. We will see.

Mixed up phone photos

I decided to free up a bit of space on my phone yesterday as I was on over 90% full. I really need to get more memory on my phone as I have over 3,000 images. The trouble is when I optimise and delete photos it resets the date on them so sometimes they all reorder themselves and jump around in my gallery until they settle down. Then I end up with a lot of duplicated photos and I have to go in and delete the duplications, and I also try and edit the others and try and delete more of the ones I don’t like. I hope you don’t have these problems!

The featured image is a painting of frost on canvas where I edited it in a filter to change the colours. It just popped up in my photo gallery.