New paintings and regular art updates.
Tiny painting for the craft fair. I’m experimenting again. I’m doing normalise things but also things to catch the eye. Tiny paintings need tiny brushes, and my eyesight is not as good as it was. Shaky hands, holding my breath. Sometimes it’s hard to get the effect you want.
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This tiny bat was flitting around the back of the village hall last night. I know they are fuzzy photos but all I can say is we watched it for about ten minutes. I think it was a pipistrelle bat. It was hard to get a clear shot because it was moving so fast.
There were a few moths about and I think it was trying to catch them. I wish I had a bat detector. It transforms the high pitched call of a bat into a clicking sound you can hear.
Anyway that’s what happened last night. No vampires were harmed taking these photos. X
This is a few years old but I painted it while I was up on top of the hill by Trentham monument. It’s looking back towards the potteries with Trentham lake in the middle ground, obscured to some extent by the trees on the hill. I’m not that good at landscapes (this is acrylic on canvas). I guess it’s in my own style but it’s a little bit splodgy.
Anyway the reason for posting this is to inspire myself to do a few more. Perhaps we can get out into the open air this week and take some photos to work from.
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This is a papier mache hill I made out of willow withies covered in newspaper and glue. The idea was to depict the last ice age. I painted a couple of wolves in the distance. This was another mystery play a few years ago. Set in the area which then became Penkhull. It was about the way the village evolved and the town surrounding it. I don’t remember much about the play except it had Romans and Celts in it, then victorians and a riot. We seem to riot a lot in the plays!
I wonder what we will be doing next year.
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I took quite a few pictures and now I can post them. Images are from middleport pottery including chimneys, the canal, machinery that is stored outside and a crane over the canal. Hope you enjoy them.
I’ve got lots of images to show you but I’ve run out of space on my plan. I have gradually deleted old photos from posts but my camera takes pictures in megabits not kilobits so it eats memory. I shall probably pay and upgrade because I use a lot of images in this blog. Anyway Middleport pottery is hidden in the backstreets of middleport in Stoke-on-Trent. It is interesting to visit as it not only makes pottery but also sells it and is home to several craft shops which make studio pottery, sell photos and other craft ware.
If you are not doing a tour of the museum entrance is free. We went in the cafe then sat by the canal for a while. There is a boat tour that called at the pottery and we may go on it soon.
There is also Clay college based there where you can learn the craft of throwing pots, and it is the setting for the TV show the great pottery throw down.
Worth a visit.
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Last year we went to Apedale light railway and enjoyed a day looking at exhibits of the anniversary of the 1914/1918 War. These are black and white sketches I did. Such an interesting day I thought I would post some of them. Each one has people included. I don’t just draw landscapes if I can help it, I like to include little portraits. When I do urban sketching I will try and include people to give a sense of scale.
It’s hot, I’m tired, I can’t sleep. I got a bit burned in the sun yesterday while I was drawing at Westport lake. These are just quick biro sketches on a Crawford and Black A4 130gsm cartridge paper sketch pad. Excuse the setting I don’t have many bright areas in the house that are shadow free so I ended up propping them up on the gas oven. Ah the joys of photography at 3am! Night all!
The choir were there but I decided not to include us in the photo. We have two more meetings of the choir before we break up for August then return in September.
Loud Mouth Women is an a capella choir, who meet at Newcastle Baptist church in Stafford Avenue, Clayton, Newcastle-under-Lyme on a Tuesday evening. It is made up of female singers who don’t audition or have to read music and is open to anyone woman who wants to sing. It improves confidence, allows you to socialise, and gives you the opportunity to learn a new skill of singing in different languages. To do this we learn by repetition, learning songs phonetically.
Tonight we learned an arab song about friendship, sang an old favourite “moonriver” and had the pleasure of being taught by Caroline who was deputising for our normal musical director Kate.
We have also recently had the enormous pleasure of going to a Yoga group run by one of the Louds, which is run an hour and a half before we sing. I was so relaxed tonight I almost fell asleep in the choir.
I made these glass pieces in my friend Angela’s glass workshop. Now I’ve bought them to another friend who is going to wire weave round them and turn them into necklaces. Glass is fascinating. I now want to find out about stained glass and glass blowing. I’m only dabbling my toes into this craft but it’s great. I’m going to maybe get an enamel kiln but that’s another story…..
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