New paintings and regular art updates.
I saw a post on Facebook today saying you have to have a high IQ to read upside down. I don’t think that’s true. I learnt in my childhood. I can’t remember exactly when. I can remember seeing my teachers notes, which was useful and I guess that I practiced doing it later on. I also used to look at text in the mirror, probably after hearing about Leonardo Da Vinci. Strange what you do as a child. Maybe it’s inquisitiveness, maybe pattern recognition?
I just remembered this word ‘Maw’, it sometimes feels like social media is a voracious maw, gulping down tons of information and generating a lot of waste or rubbish alongside useful information.
Take the moon landing for instance. There are people today who think it didn’t happen. Some of those people were not born when it happened.
I remember being allowed to stay up to watch it. The grainy pictures, the slow step of Neil Armstrong off the lander. Later visits where other astronauts drove the lunar rover. And bouncing across the surface and one of them tripping over slowly in the 1/6th gravity of the Moon.
Talking about Maws, I remember a Star Trek episode where a giant world eating machine threatens to engulf the Enterprise. Somehow they defeat the monstrous killer.
So why write about Maws? I guess it’s because I keep blogging here. I feel like I’m feeding an insatiable need. Perhaps what I churn out is rubbish? You decide X
You can’t always navigate life in a straight line. Sometimes we search for treasure and cannot find it. There are side roads and cul de sacs that hold us up or block our paths. Sometimes that is our fault, sometimes it can be others. I think somehow you have to accept things and then carry on. It’s been a sad week and I’m not over it yet, but I’m coming to terms with it. I won’t go on about things, you just have to realise that there are people who are far worse off than you. Try and help them if you can x
I went to a gathering earlier this week and met up with other creative people. I’m not saying where because I don’t know their communication protocols. Anyway we were advised someone had tested positive for Covid. The work we did was in large spaces and with social distancing, but we are all going to do lateral flow tests to ensure it does not spread. I suppose I should be OK because I have been double jabbed but I’m wearing a mask if I go near people. If I do catch anything I don’t want to share it.
Have you ever heard the phrase ‘I was dragged up to be polite’?
But I think I was taught to be polite from an early age. Things like being told not to answer back, don’t speak until you’re spoken to, children should be seen and not heard. In some ways those are very old fashioned values, but then I was born decades ago. I was the child of parents born in the 1920’s a different era. Me before Thatchers children were born, my parents before Churchill.
Politeness is important to me. Caring about things, being or trying to be aware of things, but sometimes I don’t notice. I don’t always pick up on what has happened, but at least I have politeness to fall back on. Politeness and politics must be verbally linked. Police is to do with being of the people, perhaps polite has the same root?
A question on an art page asking what they should make in needle felting. They are doing a series of animals in alphabetical order.
I can think of a few.
Goat, gazelle, geese, gecko, gnat, goldfish and giraffe.
What unusual animals can you think of? I like thinking of things like this, good for the memory. It has to be things that you think of, not what you ‘Google’, 😂
At the moment I’m stuck with my college work. I have ideas, I seem to know what I want to do. But I have a fear of failing. The heat doesn’t help. I’m ending up doing things at 3am, but it’s not enough. Words circle in my mind, like vultures, ready to sink down on the ruin of my ideas. Prevarication prevents failure. I don’t feel I can do a good enough job.
I must start. By writing this down I’m trying to give me a kick start to things. I need to order a couple of books, but I’ve even held back from doing that. I know I can do the course, but I’m disappointed that I didn’t get higher marks. I have passed each semester though. Why would this one be different? Easier to think than write…
Viruses don’t care about people because they are barely alive, it’s possibly not even alive. It’s just a shell surrounding a strand of RNA. When it attaches to receptors on a cell this gets into the cell and makes copies of itself so that new viruses are made.
Viruses don’t think, they are tiny. Saying that they attack people is like saying a thumb tack attacks your feet when you stand on it. The pain happens but it wasn’t caused by the thumb tack but by you for not looking at what you are doing.
Attacking, war, invading, fighting, phrases that anthropomorphise the virus. Making it sound like a human invader. But it’s just in the environment. It gets passed on through contact between humans. On your hands, if you cough or sneeze, on surfaces. Wearing masks and sanitising your hands are there to prevent it being passed on. Getting a vaccine will help you and help others. But the virus is not jumping on people and attacking them. We, us, humans are the way it travels….
Someone asked if there should only be self service tills in supermarkets. I aid no. I went to our local supermarket yesterday evening. I had to get a lot of stuff so we got a trolley. Have you ever tried balancing everything from your trolley on the tiny platform at the self service till? balancing it and then putting it in bags and balancing them on the other tiny platform that weighs your goods? It was crazy. There was one woman helper. She had to let me move stuff so I could carry on.
Plus it puts decent people out of work!
Books for college. A great many words arrived in the post over the last couple of days. A book called visual methodologies by Gillian Rose, illustration research methods by Rachel Gannon and Mireille Fauchon. Beginning Theory by Peter Barry and Picture This by Molly Bang. I hope the information in them will sink into my brain. Such a lot to look at and try and understand. It’s hard to take in so much, and this is just a small piece of the puzzle. I must improve my knowledge of crytical analysis. To go from descriptive to forensic. That’s hard. Generating new ideas and opinions without being opinionated. I want to try not to be cruel or condescending. To be honest and to use understandable language because some of it just feels selfish and snobbish. Hmmm.
