New paintings and regular art updates.
Ink bleeds through paper. Draw around those patches, lines and dots, and you get a patchwork ‘map’ that looks like roads and boulevards, streets and squares. A change of colour for city blocks. Villages line up on roads between fields. Some streets are tree lined, others are concrete. Does it show your age? Are you industrial or agrarian? Modern or ancient? Fortified? Or do you see veins, arteries and capillaries?
25.5.20, I drew our then outside cat outside the summerhouse where he used to sleep. Now the bushes have grown up and hubby has stored bikes in there. I’ve hardly been out this year. Too cold and wet, and it’s overgrown around it. We need to prune plants but my arm is not very strong and the muscles ache.
I don’t want the place to fall to rack and ruin. I must make more of an effort. I didn’t realise how much this pandemic could take out of you physically despite not catching the virus (hopefully never) I just wish things were better. Not just here, but everywhere. Goodness knows what atrocities are happening in Ukraine. Trucks are stuck on the motorway going to Dover while ferries are held up for health and safety deficiencies. Crops are rotting in fields, de to various problems including lack of workers because of Covid. Meanwhile our Prime minister and Chancellor have been fined for attending parties, when they had bought in laws to stop the public meeting up at parties – or stopping relatives visiting their loved ones who were dying of Covid. Many bad things, mad things, stupid things. I despair of people!
Imagine the sky actually looking like this. What could cause it? A giant bubble of soap with the liquid moving around on the surface like bubbles do. Or strange cloud formations made of gossamer from giant spiders? Maybe it’s just dust and dirt and grease smeared on a camera lens. Imagination is fun. Exploring ideas of how things work is fun too.
I didn’t walk far in March but I did walk every day. I need to do more though. Anyway I made a pattern from my steps. As you do. Mostly short distances, a few longer ones. Nothing to show off about.
Draco, the dragon constellation and Ursa minor. Draco writhes up the northern night sky from the constellation Hercules up to Lyra. It sits near the north pole of the ecliptic. It was first identified by Ptolomey in the 2nd century. It remains one of 88 modern constellations.
I’ve found out a lot as I’ve written my college report. Eastern dragons are wise and benign, western ones evil and dangerous. They have lots of different appearances that vary depending on where they are were from or the time they were imagined. No legs, two legs, four legs, winged. Dragons seem to have evolved through time and now a more standardised anatomy seems to have emerged. I wonder how dragons will change in the future?
My college project is about dragons. I have to write a report and I’m getting bogged down with all the information I’m trying to put together. From dinosaur fossils that could have been mistaken for dragons. To their ancient mythological history. Then I looked at Bestiaries and the bible. It’s surprising how many places they appear. There is a dragon or group of dragons for every continent. So much so that I cannot talk about all of them. They seem to split between benign and protective beasts or evil and sly. Then I look at the symbology of them. I tried to include some semiology within the report. Finally I’m looking at modern imagery, novels and children’s stories. I’ve also started to write a children’s book and I’m using my illustrations for it. I hope to finish writing soon but each time I think I have finished I find more to put in and more to edit out. I think I have too many quotes and I need to put more in my own words.
Tonight the clocks go forward. It means that sunrise is an hour later and sunset also an hour later than in the winter. This is BST or British Summer Time. We revert back to GMT or Greenwich Mean Time in autumn. The idea was adopted in the second World War to give farmers extra time to get crops in? The zero meridian runs through Greenwich, England, and is where the world’s time is set. As you go round the globe there are time zones set covering sections of the globe going forward or back in hourly segments.
At one stage in the UK they kept British Summer time in the winter. This was for two or three years in the 60’s or 70’s. It was darker in the mornings but lighter in the evenings. They found less traffic accidents involving children because although they were tired at the end of the school day they were able to see cars better. There were less deaths. But the government decided against keeping it because people in the far north weren’t having sunrise until 10 or 11am if I remember correctly.
There have been more recent suggestions of creating double summer time, where the clocks would permanently go forward an hour all year round, but then in the summer the clocks would go forward another hour. The idea is that this would save energy. However it has not been approved by Parliament.
Yes that’s an old floppy disc… Yes my pc used to run them. Yes it’s old. But it’s normally fine. Then tonight? I need to download photos for my report and instead I just get a black square. A bit like a blank floppy disc with a – and an X in one corner. No I made to transfer to my photo files! I’m ready to scream. I have just restarted my computer and run a virus scan. If that doesn’t work I will be having words with the local computer repair people. Maybe it’s just a glitch!
You look at me
What do you see?
Gazing out with your great
Green eyes.
Wide wise eyes,
Or evil eyed?
Which one will you be?
Your huge ego
May continue to grow.
Just be gentle
Don’t hurt me.
My brain likes pattern and complexity. I cannot abide plain white walls with no embellishments. Even my writing can be flowery? Is it because I’m interested in all sorts of things? I’m very visual, and yet I can walk past a friend without noticing them! I don’t have that face blindness thing that some people have. I think my glasses frames sometimes blocks the view.
Life is so difficult in the world at the moment. I am feeling a bit low with everything happening. But I pick up a felt pen and draw and time FLIES so fast.
Mallaband-Brown