My moon

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Yes it’s a blurry shot of the moon. But it’s the best I’ve taken with my phone. I don’t have a good zoom on it so it only magnifies x5. You know when you look at the moon you can see a small amount of detail, you can see the shape of the moon depending on what phase it is in. This was a bit more than a three  quarter moon. When I looked through a small pair of binoculars I could see craters and mare (areas of flat land that were thought to be seas in the past). But through my phone camera on automatic exposure it was just one brilliant blob. I didn’t know what to do. I tried the manual exposure option that reduced the brightness, but the exposure was still not revealing the shape. So I decided to play with the settings, I don’t know what I did, but I adjusted things and I managed to get the image above. I cropped the picture to enlarge it. This is the result. Boring? Yes possibly, but I was pleased.

9 for 2019

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9 of my favourite images from 2019.

From top left to bottom right…

Dramatic mirrored image of a North Wales beach.

Lion I painted for the local lions charity.

Mural in a downstairs cloakroom. I can still climb!

Easter Island clay head I made at Etruria Artists.

My art stall at a craft fair.

The stray cat that we are looking after who needs rehoming.

Falcon works, two images of the pottery I painted last autumn.

Holding my green man painting and with my vase painting during my exhibition at Spode.

Finally, painting of a window with peeling paint, taken from a photo I took at Spode.

Shells

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In this case a bi-valve. Shells are made up of calcium carbonate. They need a neutral water environment  to grow and survive. But like so many problems we cause, we are damaging the oceans. The seas are slowly acidifying them. The oceans are now weakly acidic which is slowly affecting the growth of shells and corals. They cannot lay down the material they are made of as easily in the current environment. If things get worse we could lose many of these beautiful creatures (yes they are animal not plant life).

More to work on in the coming decade. If we don’t a large number of animals that eat shellfish may be affected. We really do have to think about it.

Moon behind tree

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At least that’s what this is based on. The moon was setting behind the hill above our kitchen window. I could not see it as I’m too short. My hubby got me a stool to stand on so I could see the moon and the tree. I took a fuzzy photo, the quality of it was poor even though I tried to zoom in on the subject, the branches of the tree have a white glow around them but you can’t see the face of the moon.

So, a bit disappointed, but then I decided to play with the image. I ended up with this mozaic of images, including the wall and roof of the neighbours house…..

Cutting paper

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Do you ever fold paper into six and cut it up to make paper snowflakes? Thats what I did a couple of years ago. Then I duplicated it with my layout app. I did various iterations, this is one is favourite. I’m concentrating on old art work because I haven’t got the energy to draw or paint tonight. I will try and do more things in the next few days again. I also want to try and write some more poetry, but I feel jumbled up in my head…..

Words like winter, shivering, cold, spring to mind.

Dog

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This beautiful boy Collie dog came into the gallery today. I asked for permission to take his photo, I may use it to do a painting of him. He was very lively, we gave him some treats and soon he was shaking paws and rolling over to have his tummy tickled. I loved his fox colour. I think it’s called red?

He was a little nervous with all the noise and chatter around him, but soon calmed down.