The process of making a pretend thrown clay pot

Posted on July 9, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Design, Painting, Papier mache, Penkhull, Penkhull mystery play, Pretend pot, Props, Staffordshire, Stoke-on trent, Throwing potsLeave a comment

Started with a large flowerpot covered in glue and paper (Papier-mache). Then painted it with a base coat of pale orange / brown acrylic paint when it was dry. I had put a slightly smaller pot inside to bulk up the sides and it gives a nice ridge around the top as if the Potter was starting to thin out the sides. I’ve painted light and dark bands as I wanted to give it texture, partly to hide the crinkly nature of the paper and also to make it look like he is putting ridges around it.

I’m not 100% sure of the colour, perhaps it should be darker, it’s like a pale terracotta I think.

When I was forty

Posted on July 7, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Design, Forty, Fun, Memory, Painting, self portraitLeave a comment

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I did this self portrait. I don’t do many and haven’t done one recently. Maybe I should. At this time I had the front bedroom as a studio, until we got too much stuff and I moved my painting stuff out. My tee shirt was a recycling one but I haven’t seen it for years. I’m not sure what I think about this, but it’s another Facebook memory. It’s a bit blurred. I still have the original upstairs, will have to find it out.. Almost twenty years later.

Last year’s scenery

Posted on July 7, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged A year ago, Acrylic on hardboard, Art, Fun, Life, Painting, Penkhull, Penkhull mystery play, Scenery, Staffordshire, Stoke-on trentLeave a comment

FB_IMG_1562490907053 this is the scenery I painted last year. Two eight by four boards attached together to make an eight foot square panel.

In some ways painting on calico is more difficult because of the way the paint sits on it. However at least I’m not struggling to line up the two sections. I do love doing this. It makes my year.

Previous years mystery making.

Posted on June 30, 2019June 30, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged A few years ago, Art, Blogging, Life, making, Painting, Papier mache, Penkhull mystery play, WillowLeave a comment

A few years ago we did a mystery play which had to include the four horsemen of the apocalypse. This horse was made by my friend Kate and I painted it and another one in a Picasso style to give it an angular and aggressive look.

As time goes on and we get older we are doing less complicated making, basically because we are spending less time doing it. For myself I would like to do more. Anyway I’m off in a bit. Lots to do…

Mask

Posted on June 29, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Fun, Hot weather, Mask, Painting, Papier mache, Penkhull mystery playLeave a comment

My friend Kate has made this mask for the mystery play. I’ve got to paint it up to look like my hubby.

It was about 30 degrees centigrade this afternoon when we were rehearsing. I think it must have been really hot and uncomfortable in the mask. Hopefully the weather will be fine and mild when we do the play in a fortnight.

Scenery painting

Posted on June 27, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Backdrops, Calico, Life, Painting, Penkhull, Penkhull Church, Penkhull mystery play, Scenery, St Thomas's ChurchLeave a comment

I’m doing some backdrops for the Penkhull mystery play. I have calico to paint on, rather than static flat paintings that I usually do. This years backdrops are going to be rolled up and dropped down for the appropriate scenes.

Today apart from painting two willow pattern birds on papier mache I painted an eight foot by four foot backdrop of the church.

The problem was seeing the church through the trees. These mature lime trees have grown tall in the intervening years since the Church was built in the 1840’s. The backdrop is minus the trees. There was apparently a quarry and marl pit at the top of the hill which eventually filled with water and was a duck pond before it was filled in. There was a school on the land before the church was built and it was rebuilt at the top of Trent Valley Road (now the village hall). At the alter end of the church on the outside there were pigsties. I think these must predate the church.

More information about the village of penkhull can be found in books by the local author Richard Talbot.

More painting news will follow when I paint more.

Art at the Villas

Posted on June 22, 2019June 22, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Art at the Villas, Ceramics, Drawing, Life, Oakhill, Painting, Pottery, Print, Staffordshire, Stoke-on trent, Textiles, The Villas, Urban Sketchers, Urban sketchingLeave a comment

I was going to get up early today and going on a community walk along the local canal, but I got up late. I also considered going to an Urban Sketchers event at the Chatterley Whitfield nature reserve. But again I was too late. In the end we went to the Villas which is just down the road. There was an event called art at the Villas. The show was almost at the top of the road on the right hand side. The road is unadopted so go carefully driving up there. We parked at the bottom and walked.

The house we went in and its garden were full of interesting art. There were prints, original tee shirts, paintings, ceramics and a warm welcome. They were also accepting donations for charity. If you feel like visiting its in the Villas up the hill on the right off London Road, Oakhill , Stoke-on-Trent.

Since I was there and had missed other sketching opportunities I did a quick drawing of the garden and summerhouse in the distance.

Making again

Posted on June 20, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Chinese lacquer, Design, Fun, making, Making props, Painting, Penkhull mystery playLeave a comment

Today was all about making and painting things for the Penkhull Mystery Play this year. I reused two boxes from previous plays. I was asked to paint them black and then to use gold and yellow paint for the decoration.

The idea was to create boxes which would look like they had been decorated with Chinese lacquer. I didn’t know whether the idea would work, but it seemed OK.

Other work to do include sticking paper plates together to make them strong enough to be passed between 50school children and painting two large papier machè birds that represent the birds on the willow pattern plate.

One box has a landscape on the top of it, the other has a circular coin like shape on the top.

Blue

Posted on June 17, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Blue, Lapis Lazuli, Life, Oil paint, Painting, Sea, Sky, Titian, UltramarineLeave a comment

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I just watched a programme on TV about colours, one of which was blue. They showed the rock, Lapis Lazuli, which can only be found in a small number of places in the world including Afghanistan and California.

Lapis Lazuli was used as a paint pigment in paintings by artists like Titian. The rock is ground down to fine powder and then mixed with oil and wax to make oil paint. The resulting colour is called ultramarine and is a superb blue used in things like the blue paint in the robes of the virgin Mary in Titian’s paintings.

So how did Lapis Lazuli become blue? Sulphur rich rock, which was a pale grey brown was heated up 30 or 40 kilometres below the Earth’s surface. The intense heat and pressure apparently compresses the mineral and makes three atoms of Sulphur line up in each molecule. It is this geometry in the molecules that causes it to reflect pure blue light. (Sulphur is usually found in nature in a yellow, red, orange, brown or black form – the Volcanic moon of Jupiter, Io, is coloured by Sulphur).

Blue sky

Blue Sea.

Blue life.

Blue me

In the paper!

Posted on June 6, 2019June 6, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Burslem, Chartists riot 1842, Life, Murals, Not enough memory, Painting, Photo in the sentinel 5.6.19, Riot act, Staffordshire, Stoke-on trent, The Leopard Hotel2 Comments

I can’t use the actual painting in this blog because I don’t have the memory on my plan. But imagine this is a mural of the Burslem Chartists riot of 1842 that I painted in the Leopard Hotel, Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent in about 2007.

The mural includes the hotel, the original town hall in Burslem and Josiah Wedgewood House.

The painting included police and members of the Staffordshire troop taking on rioters in Burslem. The rioters were Chartists and were fighting for the rughr to vote. One of them was killed, his name was Josiah Heapy and he now has a memorial in Swan Square, Burslem.

My mural included local people from 2007 depicted as rioters. These include local historians Fred Hughes and Mervyn Edwards and the then owners of the pub, Neil Crisp and Neil Cox. Other members of the hotel staff are included. I really wish I could show it you. If I sort things out I will post photos.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Painting