Giraffes

Posted on September 13, 2020 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Africa, Art, Colour, Fun, Giraffe, Life, Memories, Miniatures, PaintingLeave a comment

I found these on my phone, small, colourful paintings in acrylic an tiny canvases. I think these were done a couple of years ago. I paint so many different things. I remember a lady from South Africa really liking these and getting one of them for her mother.

Today I get my results for my First term doing an MA. I hope I’ve done OK. You have to paint a lot of giraffes to get enough money to live on. So I’m trying to diversify! If I can get some illustration work that would be helpful. So fingers crossed and a deep breath. I will try and stay calm. X

Remembering the panto

Posted on September 13, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Flat man, Fun, Humour, Life, Memory, Painting, Panto, Pantomime, Penkhull, Scenery, Set design, Stoke-on-Trent, TheatreLeave a comment

In February we were in the local pantomime. It was Aladdin. I also painted the scenery including this cutout of a cast member who had gone through a mangle and had to come out flattened. You would think it was easy. But have you tried painting feet from the back as well as the front? I took photos of the front and back of the person but the feet looked odd? I should have placed them like Charlie Chaplin perhaps? I hope life starts to return to normal and we get to do another panto soon! Oh yes I do! Oh no you don’t!

Wedding painting

Posted on September 12, 2020 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Family, Fine Art, Friends, From two photos, Life, Married, Not photo shopped, Painting, Portraits, WeddingLeave a comment

Painting done from two photos of our wedding. I chose each portrait from one or other photo and fitted them together. I’ve got photoshop on my computer but I just did this by eye. And yes my sister is a lot taller than me. My hubby is looking like some sort of ambassador! Family and friends arranged up the stairs at the registry office. I love this painting, I had it framed and it has pride of place in our house. There are twenty nine portraits on the painting.

Looking at glass

Posted on September 9, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Colours, Drawing, Glass, Life, Opaque, Painting, Reflections, Shiny, TipsLeave a comment

I was talking to a fellow artist about drawing and painting glass. We discussed whether it has a blue tinge like water but I disagreed. I suggested he looked at the reflection on glass. Sometimes glass is tinted slightly, uranium glass for instance is yellowish, I said I thought it depended on what is added to it when it’s manufactured. I think if you were to put a glass and a plastic bottle next to each other as an exercise and draw what you see you would probably notice stronger reflections on the glass. Also look at shadows, glass, though usually transparent, throws a shadow…instead of using blue to define it I said try using a bit of grey. Observation is very important.

Spode window.

Posted on September 4, 2020 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Eleanora street, Exhibited, Fine Art, Painting, Spode, Spode site, Stoke-on-TrentLeave a comment

I’m in the reflection, you can see my fingers holding my phone in the bottom right hand pane of glass. Acrylic on canvas. Approx three foot by two foot. Painted a couple of years ago and exhibited at Spode and The Waiting room gallery at Longport. I’ve not painted much for the last six months because of covid 19 and doing my MA in illustration. But I know I need to paint again. I don’t want it to stop. I will be planning to paint more images from the Spode site. I love industrial archaeology. I hope to celebrate more of it in paint.

Painting, nebula on a star…

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Eleanora street, Life, Nebula, Painting, Space, Spode, Staffordshire, Stars, Stoke-on-TrentLeave a comment

Picture from the studio at spode last year. I thought it would be fun to paint a nebula onto a star shaped canvas I found. I’ve never seen another one. I also painted the Earth on a hexagonal canvas, but again I’ve not been able to find more. The shops seem to have less options to what they had even a year ago. I would really like to get hold of a circular canvas.

Rousseau paintings

Posted on August 30, 2020August 30, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Blogging, Challenge, For August, Henri rousseau, Life, Orme Art group, Painting, WatercolourLeave a comment

We had to chose one or more squares to paint frome a Henri Rousseau painting as part of this months challenge from the Orme Art group. I chose these two. I’ve looked for the painting online but all I can see is one of him riding a tiger with what looks like bird of paradise plants instead of fruits? So I don’t actually know what this is called. I did two small watercolours and had to blot them a bit to take off some if the colours that were running into each other. The top left one was particularly difficult to do as I had to try and get the leaves to overlap. Also the colours I had did not exactly match the picture. Each image has a yellow number on it, in a large font…. So it’s a bit difficult to guess the details under the numbers. I hope to see everyone’s finished work this week when they are amalgamated together.

Tree spirits

Posted on August 23, 2020August 23, 2020 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Autumn, Colour, Design, Faces, Life, Painting, People, Spirits, Tree spiritsLeave a comment

Acrylic on canvas

I keep finding old photos of paintings that I have done over the years. This was called tree spirits and went to a lovely couple who had fallen in love with it. Those that follow my blog know I love pattern and shapes. My favourite shape is the spiral. I don’t know why… But curving round and twisting, leaves shading the faces. I want to do more like this.

My mural of Molly Leigh

Posted on August 23, 2020August 23, 2020 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Art, Back room, Burslem, Closed, Life, molly leigh, Mural, Painting, Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent, The Leopard Hotel, WitchLeave a comment

Molly Leigh was said to be the Burslem witch. She lived in a small cottage, a photo of which I based this picture on. There are no photos of her so I tried to find a painting of an elderly woman from about that time and chose a picture of a French peasant by Theodore Gericault as an inspiration. The plants in the background are meant to be foxgloves and different herbs in a garden I imagined to be full of things you could use for remedies. I didn’t find much out about her life, except she is meant to be buried in a local church yard with the grave orientated East West, instead of the normal North South way. We went for a walk and ended up in the graveyard, only to get told off by someone from the church who kept getting people messing about round Mollys grave. When we explained we were on a photo walk of Burslem and we didn’t want to do any strange rituals he was OK. The painting is set on a night of the full moon and I tried to make the sky atmospheric and spooky. I’m sorry people won’t be able to see my murals in the Leopard anymore. No doubt they will be painted over or removed.

Mural at the Leopard in burslem

Posted on August 14, 2020August 14, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, bBurslem, Blogging, Emulsion paint on lining paper, Facebook memory, Jisiah Heapy, Mural, Painting, The Leopard Hotel2 Comments

This popped up on my Facebook memories today, it’s a mural I painted on lining paper on the wall in the Arnold Bennett suite at the Leopard Hotel, in Burslem, Stoke on Trent. It’s about 13 or 14 years since I painted it. It’s based on the Burslem Riot which happened at the same time as other riots were happening in the country about how people were being treated. I think it was organised by the chartists in 1843 (when they were trying to get the vote if I remember right). The riot act was read to disperse the crowd. A man called Josiah Heapy was shot dead by the troops and is remembered as a victim of oppression by the local elite. The main characters in the ainting were all based on people I knew.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Painting