Pears

Posted on October 23, 2018 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Blog, Blogging, Drawing, Garden, Gardening, Pear, Sketch, TreeLeave a comment

A couple of weeks after our small crop of apples the pears have almost all fallen off the tree following a strong breeze. There are two left up on the tree.

As with all windfalls they are a bit battered and bruised. We had a few earlier and I think birds have been trying to eat them too, but pears stay hard for ages then suddenly ripen so they are not soft enough for the blackbirds and robins in the garden.

What to do with them? I’m going to chop off the bad bits then poach them in white wine when they are a bit riper . I dont think they will be beautiful pears standing up right in their bowls, but a bit more of a chopped up chunky pudding, with added custard. I might take photos!

Why is the tree at an angle? I don’t know, we put it in and it grew this way. This year we put an old shelf upright underneath it to support it as it was tipping further. As it grows large fruit, they seem to pull on the top half. Hopefully it won’t snap. It was bought as a sapling from an old Woolworth store. It must have been planted 20 years ago and since its matured it’s always borne fruit.

Hooray for the old pear tree. Faithfull fruiter!

He’s a good cat.

Posted on October 22, 2018October 22, 2018 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Cat, Cold, Drawing, Feet, Photo, Sketch, SleepLeave a comment

It’s getting cold and I need to put the heating on, but my cat has decided to curl up on top of my feet. I’m sitting infront of a chair that I’m using as an easle and he is tucked under the chair on top of my feet and next to a box containing my paints. In the meantime my feet are warm as toasty, but my legs are cold . . But I don’t want to move him.

Having a quiet evening

Posted on October 20, 2018October 20, 2018 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Drawing, Pen and ink, Relaxing, Sketch, Tired, Urban sketch1 Comment

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I’m doing a 1 inch drawing challenge and today’s drawing is of a small tumbler with whisky over ice. It’s not something I do a lot of. But it’s been a long few days with a lot of travel and then singing with a choir this afternoon, I’m shattered ….

🦇?

Posted on October 11, 2018 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Halloween, Haunted, October, Sketch, Spooky, ZombiesLeave a comment

You know it’s getting towards Halloween when your local garden centre cafe is decorated in signs like these and stick on blood splattered hand prints, witches and ghostly sheet covered apparitions (why a ghost would wear a sheet defies explanation) .

There’s a couple of places round here that may be haunted. One is the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent.. This old Inn and hotel has even appeared on Britain’s most haunted. It is said to have Ghostly apparitions. I know they do ghost walks around the upper floors. I must go again.

The other place you may find a Ghost is Little Moreton, owned by the National Trust. This is an Elizabethan Hall out on the border between Staffordshire and Cheshire on the A34 Road. It’s an amazing building with a timber frame. There is a long gallery upstairs, and a few eerie corners, and dark places which feel spooky.

One thing we have seen recently are small bat’s 🦇 flitting about in the 🌆 dusk. They come round the back of our house because we have a pond. We have also seen them on the canal at Etruria and also up behind penkhull village hall. I don’t know if they hibernate in the winter or just stay dormant but they are probably feeding themselves up to survive the cold months.

Here

Posted on October 4, 2018 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Doodles, Etruria, Fun, Poem, Poetry, SketchLeave a comment

Here I am again

Doodling little squares,

Trying to catch life in a box.

Here I sit with pen in hand,

Drawing the world

Squeezing reality into 2 dimensions.

Time pauses while I sketch,

Only to leap forward an hour

When… I. … look.. .. Up..

Here is life compressed,

Its size shrunk like a postage stamp

With the world drawn on it…..

Here is here at Etruria, here I sketch.

phoenix

Posted on May 31, 2018May 31, 2018 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Animals, Art, Bird, Digital doodling, Mythical, Phoenix, Short story, Sketch4 Comments

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Apologies to real writers out there. I drew this then decided to write a very short story to go with it…forgive me!

The Phoenix rose into the air above the flames, it’s wings beat them back and swirled huge sparks around it. The shock waves from its flight blew branches off the trees, then tiles off the roof just across the way from where the bird had cracked the golden shell of her egg.

In the bedroom of the house a young girl sat brushing her hair before she got into bed. A small nightlight with a pink shade cast a gentle glow in the room. Two windows let in pale starlight, and for a moment the girl thought she saw a shooting star streaking across the sky.

The Phoenix had seen the steady light from the bedroom. It was young and craved the warm heat that it had left behind. It had been born in the bonfire that the girls neighbour had lit earlier in the day, not knowing that an old Phoenix had laid her egg there before fluttering off to die in the forest.

Phoenix can survive without fire, but when they are chicks they need warm light to dry out their feathers which stay damp from the egg for a long time. The light from the room was just right so beating her wings she flitted across the street.

The girl opened her window to allow cool air into the room and snuggled down under the covers. As she lay there she thought she heard the scrabbling of her cats claws at the door. But the noise seemed to be coming from her bedside table. Quietly she lifted the blankets and looked, directly into the glinting eye of the Phoenix!

No ….she must be dreaming she thought. Then she saw the bird had carefully curved its wings around the top of the night light. It raised its head so that its neck was straight and beak pointed up to the ceiling.

Now it was bathing in the heat and light, gaining strength with each minute. The girl lay still, she didn’t want to breath. She could see through the wings, they were almost transparent now, the bird was starting to fade……

“Don’t go!” she whispered, but it was too late. The Phoenix had become a sparkling, soaring mass of light, weightless, magical, etherial.

Quietly it flowed through the air like liquid gold and silver. …out through the window and on towards the rising moon….

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Sketch