New paintings and regular art updates.
Went to see the fine art degree shows, for copyright reasons I haven’t taken photos. Overall impression? Interesting and different. I’m feeling old fashioned because I use paint and canvas.
I suppose things have changed a lot over the forty years since I started my degree.
By the way I appear to have used up all my memory space on here in the six months since the start of the year. I may have to change my plan to carry on posting photos here!
Here are a few more photos of the exhibition courtesy of Sarah. They are all wide shots. I’m going to get some digital photos done of each one.
Only two more days and it will be down.
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The sunset reflected on penkhull Church. I’ve altered the exposure on these, increasing the red or changing the background clouds. The top two are closer to the original pictures, but not as bright as I saw. This is because your eyes accommodate to the light levels, letting more light in by opening your iris in your eye, making the pupil wider. The trouble was as I increased the brightness the sky just disappeared into white, so I tried changing the colours in the curves section of my photo editor.
Found this lumpy moss on the church wall. It was lovely, little blobs growing on the old stone, even though its close to a busy road. It’s at the top of the hill so the wind scours across the hill top. Sometimes the wind is so strond it could blow you off your feet..
Moss is an interesting plant, the reproduction is by spores I think, and it needs damp conditions to live in. I’m sure people know more about it than I do. Anyway I took a couple of photos as an idea if what it looked like.
I then did a duplicated picture of it because it made an interesting pattern. 
Hope you enjoy.
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Walked into the kitchen and saw this through the window so had to take a couple of photos on my phone. Then I wondered how it would look if I turned it into a pattern which is the third one.. See photo below.
It just looks so alien. I think this is called a mackerel sky? Not sure what the cloud type is.
The light shining off the clouds from the sun was very bright but quickly faded. I do love looking at skies and I’m interested in the mechanics of them. You never know I might paint it.
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Most weekends I’ve been busy recently with other things, but I decided to get out and plant up tomatoes in the grow bags and added some pepper plants ( which had sadly been partly munched by slugs). We don’t use any pesticides or herbicides so everything just keeps growing and we seem to have lots of bees round the cotoneaster flowers. We saw a couple of butterflies too. There is a bare patch where we are having a summer house put in soon. Then I can get some clematis growing over the fence.
Blurry shot of a bee on the cotoneaster plant. Its covered in tiny flowers so very attractive to them.
We visited the Middleport pottery a while ago on a rainy day and I took a few photos. I liked the atmospheric lighting, the sheen of water on the cobbles and the model of the pottery that is in the museum. I hope to visit again soon.
Middleport pottery is next to the canal in Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. It has a museum, a cafe, a shop where you can buy pottery and various events. There are also studios and workshops which make for an interesting place to visit.
Random photos of trains and train parts (not the propeller), from 2017.
Foxfield Railway is out in the countryside off the A50 between Caverswall and Blythe Bridge. Its an old coal/mineral line which used to haul coal up a steep slope from a mine then down a less steep incline into the outskirts of Blythe Bridge. The main railway line runs nearby.
Foxfield is worth a visit over the summer months when it is open to visitors mainly at weekends. You can take a trip on a train, visit the engine shed where most of these photos were taken. Visit the cafe for a simple menus of hot and cold food, or visit ” the one legged shunter , the bar selling real ales. The bar is named after the dangerous job of shunting. Men would sometimes get trapped between train waggons, losing legs or sometimes worse!
I wrote about going to see Warhorse last week, but I did a drawing because we were not allowed to take photos.
Then I found these photos on line. I think they are publicity shots which are allowed to be shared. If they suddenly disappear you will know why.
They just show the beauty and also horror of the play. Such strong sculptural images.
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It took me a few months to realise that there is a panorama mode on this phone. This was westport lake last month. I like that my partner is at the far right and the path continues at the far left. The geese are at different heights which seems to work with the step where the landing stage cuts into the waters surface. Mine and my friends shadow are a bit annoying but the sun was setting behind us and all the shadows fan in towards the lake. I like how the path on the left is straight and not curved like the rest of the photo.
I’m picking random photos to look at because often they just get a glance and then I move on……
Mallaband-Brown