Missing friends

The trouble with blogging is that you make friends and then after a while they might disappear. Suddenly they go into the fog of the Internet. It’s not clear if something has happened to them or if they have just left. Thankfully people do write and say they are going sometimes. That’s not as bad. But it leaves a hole in your life when you’ve got used to reading their words. You can go back and look at previous posts but it’s not the same. Or you can find them on other platforms. I remember finding someone on Instagram after they had left here. But a few months later they left there as well.

It’s also a shock when after losing touch with people over the years you find out they have died. It happened last weekend, someone I had known for a while had passed away. I asked her husband how she was and he said she had died two years ago. He said everyone in the town knew she had passed away. I had to explain that I don’t live in that town so had not found out. I was so sad to have discovered she was gone.

The worst thing I think is Facebook memories. Someone who has died will suddenly appear on a memory. Or their birthday will show up. It can be disturbing. There should be a memorial button. A way of closing an account without erasing them. Meanwhile. If I decide to leave WordPress I will try and remember to let people know. X

How do I draw from imagination?

How do I draw from imagination? I talk and think my way through things, by describing how they should look in my mind or verbally helps to make me think more about details of the image I’m drawing.

For example, this drawing was based on a memory of my walks in a local park as a child. There were trees that seemed to have faced in them. They were probably Ash trees, they seemed to have long spidery branches with tipped up ends like fingers. The path wandered around past stone walls that I used to balance on. Behind me was a play area with a slide, swings and a roundabout and seesaw. This is a memory drawing so it isn’t exactly accurate and things have probably changed a lot. I haven’t been back for years. But the face in the tree gives me a bit of a feeling of nervousness I used to get as a child.

Willow pattern banner

A banner for one of our Penkhull Mystery Plays. We hold them most summers and the one this was painted for was about the pottery industry and its history. This banner was based on the willow pattern famous in the potteries. Spode was one of the factories that made plates and pots with this design, but if you Google ‘willow pattern’ you can find lots of images from many manufacturers.

Blue acrylic paint on a canvas cloth. It took me a while to paint. I also painted the local church and methodist Hall as they would have appeared in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Support small business

Pandemic=lockdowns=not going out=buying online.

But if you wear a mask and social distance, you could go into local shops. You could spend money at places that are hitting brick walls when it comes to trading and selling. Local shops bring trade into towns and cities. Money spent there is shared round the local community and can be reinvested. You can spend online but that money just goes to massive industries and into the back pockets of billionaires.

Think first, buy local if you can or buy from independent makers. X

Etruria Flint Mill

I added my easle yesterday. Today I’m showing you my easle two years ago, I did a painting of Etruria Flint Mill. It’s also called Jessie Shirley’s Bone and Flint mill I think? It’s the only working Steam driven Flint mill in the country and the flints and bone  were crushed and ground using the power of the steam driven beam engine there.

The buildings are part of Etruria Industrial Museum, a complex of cafe, the museum displays, and the Flint mill on the Trent and Mersey and Cauldon Canals at Etruria, Stoke on Trent. I’m not sure of its opening times. But once a month it used to be fired up and you could watch the fly wheel rotating round and the pans where the flints were ground rumbling as the engine turns them. Its amazing to see the industrial archeology of the potteries in action.

Painting or photo?

Changing this
To this

By mirroring, changing texture, changing the colour and adding lens flare you can get a whole different, if artificial, landscape. I’m not sure I have made it look natural, I wanted to make it look like I had used a paintbrush and oil paints, but the lens flare is perhaps too sharp. Maybe I should put it through another filter or have I gone far enough.

Don’t underestimate the common cold.

Atishoo! Atishoo! We all fall down?!

Three negative lateral flow tests, but my nose is blocked and I keep sneezing. I’ve started with a tickly cough… Feeling hot and cold and shivering.. You forget that there are other illnesses out there that can get you. A cold I think, not as bad as flu, but I feel rough. I want to curl up like a hedgehog and fall asleep for the rest of the winter.

Seriously though, I’m not sharing this with anyone. I’m going to carry on wearing a mask when I finally get out again. And make sure you get all your jabs, Covid and flu. Take care, stay well!

When you think you are blogging…

Grr. I blog here and have this page linked to Facebook. Or so I thought. But because I haven’t kept an eye on my Facebook art page I didn’t realise they are not synchronised. I know my posts here are going somewhere. To my normal page I think. I’ve just opened my art page up to the public. It was just for friends, I may limit it again. I don’t know. Having this cold isn’t helping me think very clearly!

Facebook (meta?) has a tenancy to change things without letting you know. I’m not that savvy with these things so if I don’t see a notification about how things have changed I don’t necessarily know about it. Then I get surprised by things like this. Anyway… Sigh…. X