New paintings and regular art updates.
Flipped and duplicated photo of frost seen on the inside of my car windscreen. The reds are from the car colour. The sky was a brilliant pale blue. I’ve boosted the contrast a bit. Making symmetrical patterns really works with images like this.
A crab? A pouting face? A reflection of a dragon? You can do funny things with symmetry and photos. Christmas cactus turned into something surreal. It would be better if it was less blurred, but my arm shakes so much sometimes that I get camera shake. Still it’s an interesting image and it’s an example of Pareidolia (seeing creatures in a pattern that isn’t actually there). I have posted a few of these on the blog over the years.
Reviewing old photos from a few years ago I came across some pictures of Dahlias. This one of a pompom Dahlia really resonated. I remembered my father used to grow them in the summer when I was a child. He had a whole patch of them, this shape and more shaggy ones. I remember I could see spirals in them. They were all different reds and oranges, whites and magenta and yellows. Striking against the green leaves and stems. They were in a small back garden and next to a pile of soil where we children would play ‘I’m the king of the castle get down you dirty rascak’ not sure how that worked except we competed to be at the top of the pile of soil…. Memories are random and come back infrequently. I just remember the Dahlias and sunshine.
Shadows and woodchip wallpaper
Plant on the stairs
Casts it’s shape across
The textured swirls.
Reds and yellows tint
Shedding light askance
Hiding in plain sight.
Frozen frosting delight.
Yesterday, 1st December, a pelargonium (sometimes known as geranium) outside our front door. It’s still in flower since we planted it this summer. In flower for almost six months. We have other plants in the garden like nasturtiums. But today is probably going to be the coldest day and night this winter. I will be sad to see everything wilt and die. We can only look forward to next year. We will be planting more of these and some manage to survive the winter too.
This is the bottom half of a Jardinere I saw at Salts Mill, Saltaire in Yorkshire this week. I was attracted by the mythical beast. A sphinx perhaps? I love the strong red glaze and the crisp modelling of it. There is a top section which has a cherub or some sort of child modeled on it.
I would have included larger photos, but I’m running out of memory!
I think this might be finished but I’m waiting for daylight to check the colours. I might tone down the white and I may add some blue tones to make it feel like the sky is being reflected in it. The poppy was real, but I took this from a painting I did of a photo so I might look at some images of poppies.
Work in progress. I want to try and get more realism into this. It’s based on a previous painting, but I decided to try and get in closer and give a finesse to the petals texture and the central structure of the poppy. I’ll post again when it’s finished.
Painted this today, only 5×5 inches. I might add more to the background. It’s meant to have droplets of water (like tears) on the petals. I’m also trying to emphasise the flower with a strong red but I don’t know if I should darken the greens. Still I have at least painted again.
I painted this a few years ago, it’s based on a poppy with a white centre. Most poppies have dark splodges in the centre. I think this looks more subtle. I’m toying with the idea of painting a mixture of both on a larger canvas? The background would be greens and straw coloured. Got to possibly block out or draw out their positions and then maybe add some forget-me-nots.
Mallaband-Brown