New paintings and regular art updates.
Our apple trees have got a lot of fruit for a change. I think they are finally maturing and as they have had their branches trained along the fence they are bearing more fruit than if they were growing straight up, some of them are already ripening and turning red. I don’t know their variety but they are tasty.
Poppies make me smile
They have real style
If I could put them in order
I love white ones with a red border.
I like himalayan blue
I wonder if you do too?
Welsh poppies are yellow
A colour that’s mellow…
Orange from Californian lands
Red sunshine, might grow on sands
But red are my favourite flower
They seem to have a great power.
To me they are iconic
And I’m not being ironic
The colour of Ruby lips
Red blood and rose hips…..
Yet again I can see faces in this pattern. Like little dogs faces. The pale green patches with black horizontal lines coulsvbe frogs eyes. I got the colours by playing with ‘curves’ on my photo editor on my phone. I like the way the complementary colours of red and green work together. I could see this as a print on a scarf or even a place mat for a coffee cup or a pattern on the actual cup.
A building with red safety rails began to be built two years or so years ago. This steel skeleton was erected within a few weeks. But then Covid struck. Work stopped and never resumed. Instead we are left with an unbuilt block of studio flats.
There is nothing to indicate who the owners are or whether it will be completed. Bits of metal are strewn in the base of the building including a battered wheelbarrow. The security fencing and security gates have been severely damaged and the site is accessible through the broken gate. Whenever it is completed I hope it will be better than the current site.
Horses are wonderful animals. They have such amazing characters. When I tried to find something in the matching splodges to the previous post I almost immediately found the large horse head. Then the other two emerged from the patterns. I just needed to add some white, green and yellow to differentiate between them.
Here’s the tiger cub from paint blots. Stripes were added with ink pen and felt pen. I think it works. I’m not sure about the red as it might look like blood, but it’s only really a doodle so it’s not a serious piece of art. Just a bit of fun. I wonder what I would make of a real Rorschach test?
Rooves, around the back of the Etruria Industrial Museum today. Drawn with felt pens. Took about an hour as I was trying to get the red and green moss that was growing on them. The corrugated iron or other metal was hard to capture. I tried hard to get the shading right in the bright sunshine. This was done with Stoke Urban Sketchers who met up for the day at the Industrial Museum site.
This acrylic on canvas Poppy painting will be on sale in a shop in Stone, Staffordshire later in the week. I will try and get a few photos of our group display when everyone has hung their work.
Poppies come in lots of colours from large red, magenta, pink and white ones to smaller common poppies with red patals and black splodges in their centres. Also white and pink variations. Then there are the bright oranges of Californian poppies, orange and yellow Welsh poppies and blue, hymalayan poppies. Just gorgeous.
Sometimes even blurred photos work. I used photodirector to add texture to this. Why? Because although it was blurred the colours were really interesting. The contrast of dark reds and greens and pale green and pink seemed to work really well. You can still tell what it is but in an abstract way. In a way its sketching with photography. I think it’s still art.
Nine years since I painted this poppy with a white centre. I think that makes it look fresh and cool. Poppies have paper thin, crinkled petals. They look so delicate. I have lots of yellow, Welsh poppies in the garden, but not as many red ones that seem to need more sunlight. This was an acrylic on canvas and I think it sold quite quickly? But after almost a decade I still love it.
Mallaband-Brown