Self portraits

Self portraits in 1978

Our college exhibition in 1978, a few of us got in the local paper. One image was painted in quink ink on paper and the other one was larger on a canvas. I don’t remember what happened to them. I may have left them at the school of art. Even now I still remember the fun I had painting them. I wish I could go back in time to those days again. I don’t know if they still sell quink ink. When you added water to the black colour it would split into browns and blues. Great for painting cloudy skies

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Cat again

Big head, tiny paws. An example of foreshortening. Those dark eyes do stare at me. You have to be a mind reader sometimes with cats. But they are persuasive. In this case its his ‘feed me…’ look. Then when he’s eaten he’ll be back out through the cat flap. Padding around in the dark, exploring his territory.

You know, cats are sneaky. They get humans round their little paws. They are incredible cheeky creatures!

Wordless cartoon

I can’t remember the story behind this or whether there was a prompt. I drew it last year. I had to draw something with four panels for my college course. It starts with someone by a campfire. The fire goes out so they go to get more wood, But instead of it all being sticks, a snake, which had been asleep wakes up. I like the simple style I drew it in and the minimal images in it. But now I look back at it I worry that the snake would have been burned or might have woken up before being put on the embers. Even with a simple story you have to be aware of consequences!

Don’t look at me like that?

Taking a photo and playing with it. I discovered one side of my face looks older and more dour than the other one. My face frowns and my mouth turns down, there’s more lines. I might have to get a haircut too, but it doesn’t really matter. I think observing yourself is part of being an artist, self portraits tell a story. Distorting them can ask a question.

Some images can be more distorted than others! Making the image black and white helps me concentrate on the features.

Little Earth painting

A couple of years ago I painted this picture of Earth. I was trying to get the shading right so the clouds sit above the surface was difficult. This is North America, Canada and part of Mexico and the Caribbean.

I hope the cloud shapes work and you can see the weather patterns. I wonder if anyone would be interested in paintings of worlds. It’s something I’m interested in. I’ve painted pictures of Jupiter and other astronomical images. I don’t use an airbrush for painting so it’s quite hard to get the granularity and softness of space and planets.

Face

Self portrait, abstract face, imagined radio telescope, contrast, thinking, list, try to write tags as a blog, imagination staccato, broken, poem lacking poetry, no rhyme, anxious, calm? Satellite, image, lost memory, solarize, a brief history of what? Experience and experiment, conscious, concentrate. Observe words, expected explanation. Nonsense. Uttered. Rambling, waffle…

The Moon’s out

A glint, a glimmer through the clouds. Blue sky darkening. Sunlight catches the side of the moon, there is a hint of where the Sun is, down and to the right of the moon. About thirteen times a year the moon is in this stage of its phases. I’m not sure, but because most months are thirty one days (four are thirty days, one is twenty eight or twenty nine and seven are thirty one) this adds up to twenty nine or thirty extra days over the year. If we had thirteen actual months, not lunar months in a year, what would we call the thirteenth? Lunary? Lol

Oorie?

It was an Oorie day, the sky was full of dark grey, shifting clouds. A cold wind blew from the North East. Hail started to fall, bouncing off roofs and into gutters. The roads and pavements were slippery with the icy white mass of hail. It crunched underfoot. But it was melting quickly and rivulets of ice and water ran down the road into the grids by the pavement.

It’s hard to describe an ‘oorie’ day, even though I’ve just walked home in one. I saw the word on a friends page where she was writing a piece using the word as a prompt. That’s why I looked it up, I’ve never come across it before and doubt I will use it again.

Titanic cost!

On sale, you can build your own scale model of the Titanic. It’s being advertised at the moment on TV. Working parts and museum quality.

Sounds great? The first installment is £1.99, and there are 140 issues… So that would be around £280….expensive I know, and you have to put it together yourself…

But don’t forget to read the small print. The first issue is £1.99, the further 139 issues are £9.99 each! So that’s £9.99 x 139 + £1.99 = £1390.60! What? And if you miss one edition, or they don’t do the whole run? I think you’ve got to be very dedicated and strongly motivated to do it and spend so much!