New paintings and regular art updates.
For the first time in months I went to sing with the Loud Mouth Women choir. Covid fears and a pulled calf muscle has stopped me. I had to admit I’ve been scared of mixing. But I went, and I felt a bit better in myself afterwards. You don’t realise how depressed you are getting until you force yourself to do things, but I did it. It’s cheered me up. It was the last choir practice this year and we sang some Christmas songs. Glad I went.
We went to Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent today to enjoy something called the Big Feast which is run by a group called Appetite and is held in the summer. I’m in two choirs and we had two spots to sing at (hence no photo of us). Between our spots were a couple of musicians playing a sitar and drums. The sitar was made of a pumpkin? Or gourd? With a long wooden neck. The sitar player said the instrument had seventeen strings. He explained that he played the opposite technique to the famous player Ravi Shankar. However he played it was very beautiful. I admire both players skill.
We finally sang as a choir tonight. We were socially distanced. Each of us had a chair placed behind a CD. Two meters apart. We did some stretches and vocal exercises and suddenly we were singing together in reasonable harmony. We even sang in parts, soprano, tenor, alto and base. It was lovely! No zoom where all you can hear is yourself and the choir leaders. We started quietly but by the end we had some volume. Hearing each other gets the camaraderie going again.n
Next stop, singing in public at a canal day this coming Sunday. I hope we all stay well and the weather improves!
One of tonights choir group, each week I’ve been drawing a participant as they sing. It’s good practice as they are moving and the shadows move with them. If you notice the image is slightly distorted. That’s because I had the sketchpad flat on my desk and it’s caused a slightly elongated drawing that is tipped slightly to the right…
It’s something to check on when you are drawing, sometimes it can cause a lot of distortion if you are not careful.
Mark who was part of this evenings Clay Chorus group. He played two brilliant songs. I used a bit of monoprint to add shadows to the side of his face. I only used a bit as he was moving and playing his guitar as I was trying to sketch him.
I wish I had his skill and had carried on learning an instrument, it’s great to be able to play things, but my trumpet is staying firmly locked away!
Dr Kathy Bullock ran the afternoon workshop for the Stoke Sings Festival 2021, #ssf21. She was brilliant, giving a history of the slave trade and the way people were transported from Africa across the world as slaves. Dragged from their homes and imprisoned in cells until ships came and took them away. She explained the inhuman ways they were held and treated. Their transportation in ships where they were often thrown overboard if they were sick or had died during the passage. Beaten and tortured. And from this came the spiritual songs people sang as they worked, and later the Gospel songs as they worshipped. The history of African America is so sad and their treatment was and is despicable. They deserve the freedom that some people just have through the luck of birth.
The workshop was wonderful, Dr Bullock’s singing is great. It was so informative and thought provoking.
Today is Stoke Sings Festival 2021. Over a hundred singers have got together virtually on Zoom and are singing together (muted sadly, it’s not possible to sync the sound). #ssf21 is the hashtag and I’ve posted a couple of drawings here of the workshop leaders as they taught us…
Shattered. Thought there was another Zoom meeting … But ended up miming to a virtual panto song. We are holding a virtual pantomime in a couple of weeks. Songs and sketches.. (our village hall usually holds a live one in February), so we are doing a ‘locked down in panto land pantomime!!
Had a couple of zoom meetings tonight. I decided to draw the second one as it was a choir practice. Partly because it was another Zoom meeting and partly because it looked slightly different because there were song lyrics showing up sometimes. The words are made up or from the song I sang because they only showed up when we were singing the songs.
The characters are representative but not exact portraits. In black and white ink on cartridge paper. 
It’s a screenshot! I have recorded a couple of songs for a virtual pantomime. It’s a group of us singing the beginning and end songs for the performance. I hope it goes together OK. We will then be given small scenes to speak our lines… I’m not sure how it’s going to work, people a lot cleverer than me will sort it out!
Fingers crossed we get some sort of funny performance result. X
Mallaband-Brown