New paintings and regular art updates.
I was doing a couple of commissions of Etruria flint and bone mill. I had done one painting and a couple of people liked it and wanted copies. This is when I started using long thin canvases. It makes landscapes more interesting I think. Is it like letterbox TV? I don’t know. I’m hoping I can get back to doing things like this when we get back to something like normality.
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A few years ago I did this digital drawing of the whirlpool galaxy. This was done at a website called sketchfu. I’ve written about it before.
When you think of how many billions and trillions of stars there are in a galaxy, and how many millions or billions, or many more, galaxies there are in the universe. It is awe inspiring. Looking out across space is looking back in time. The visible stars light, and the light from distant galaxies, has been travelling towards us for great lengths of time. Even the light from the Sun takes eight minutes to travel to the Earth. Is it that we are ahead in time compared to the rest of the universe? Or maybe not? Maybe we are behind? Because if something happened on another world or star, we would not find out till their light reached us, by which time that occurance would be possibly billions of years in their past.
Time, intriguing, confusing, we can only travel with it. Gravity can distort it, lengthen it. So much to know… So much to find out.
Waiting for the phone to ring,
Waiting for the vet to call.
What will be the scan result?
Will he be on medication?
Worried, waiting, hoping, aching.
Shall I ring, or shall I wait?
Will the treatment be too late?
Nervous, thinking, imagined perils.
Cat must be OK, I prey.
Sitting in my car on a sunny day. Waiting for an appointment with the vets. They had to phone me while I was outside because I wasn’t allowed inside with my cat. The problem was that my phone signal wasn’t good. I was ten foot away from the vet and she couldn’t hear me! I stood outside the car and shouted, she still didn’t hear me. But I know the layout of the surgery. Beyond the door is a short corridor, at the end is the consulting room. If she had opened the consulting room door, she would have heard me. Meanwhile my cat was quiescent in his travelling bag. We’ll, eventually the vet came out. The cat was carried in. Then half an hour of waiting. That’s when I took this photo.
Next stop? Ultrasound scan on his heart next week as he has a heart murmur. Also antibiotic liquid, that was fun. It took ages, but I got him to take it in cat milk. Cats don’t know what’s good for them!
Fingers crossed he will be a bit better when he has the scan.
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22.4.20, about a month into lockdown. I wonder what was going through my mind? I don’t think I was as nervous then as I am now. I was thinking about food. Now I’m thinking about not going out, despite the pubs opening up carefully and hairdressers and other non essential shops. Do I feel like going out? No, I think this is too early. Especially where alcohol is involved. I’ve seen groups of four or five men walking past the house, looking like they are off for a ‘good night out’.
What can I say. I understand people need to escape. I feel so tense I’m shaking. How do refugees and people in war torn areas survive? We are lucky. The problem might cause massive problems with wealth but I want people to be safe and survive this. Ah well, maybe I will do another drawing x.
I’d written a poem about nature and autumn. But my phone won’t save drafts of my posts. I hit the wrong key. So I’ve lost it. It no longer exists. Like summer moving into autum then onwards, the poem has gone into the aether, lost for all time. I could try rewriting it, but the sentiment is lost, the feeling has gone. I’d done some nice rhymes, but I’m not going to easily remember them.
And when we get to this time next year? The world will have moved on through space and time. We never come back to the same place. The Earth turns, spiralling around the sun, which in turn moves around the galaxy…..
Bye words, take care xxx
In a time when photos
were printed on paper,
and swords
were made of cardboard
and silver foil.
Hooped earrings were in fashion,
And bangles jingled.
I wore an eyepatch on my glasses
and pretended to be
Long John Silver,
or Captain Hook,
Red beard
or some other rapskallion…
Oh what fun!
To be young again,
and silly…
A stitch in time saves nine,
Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
Manyana
Prevarication
Am I depressed? I have things to do, and I keep putting them off. Watching TV, doing other things, like painting. I need to call the builder because I’ve found a crack in our front wall. I need to finish an assignment, I need to look after myself, I need to regain some calmness and relax.
Part of it is lack of sleep. Staying up late, one more blog, TV show, book to read. I’m not being organised. Maybe I can sort things out.
What to do. Don’t stay up till 1am. Or later.. Much later.. Oh hell!
Too many nights have turned into day while I’ve been mooching about. The little twitches of my mind as I listen to pings from my phone. How did I ever get so addicted to a phone!
I don’t know how it happened. I just mumble on here and sometimes people like what I say.
Maybe I should assess how I write things. I’m sure my grammar isn’t correct. How is it that people are following this? I don’t think I’m particularly profound. I have some strong feelings, that people should be treated fairly and equally.
I talk about my art and how I create it. I’m not pushing sales of my paintings. If someone is interested they can get in touch. I like talking about science and nature and the environment. I try and keep informed but I’m not an expert.
What else? I’m getting older and hope I can use my experiences to help people if I can.
I really like trying to write poetry. I wrote something called ‘unexpected item in the bagging area’ a comic poem about my experiences of using a self checkout at the supermarket. That was my first poem here a couple of years ago and it kickstarted my writing.
I occasionally write short stories here. I tried writing to photo prompts but I struggled with keeping to the image. I also write short, five word, challenges where you have to include a word, FOOL for instance. Also the challenge of writing limericks, working out how to rhyme things.
I also love sharing my art. Lots of funny little pictures, or murals, or acrylics on canvas or even urban sketchers and other art groups that I’m interested in. I do a lot of digital stuff and I’m on a college course on illustration.
So thank you for following me. I can’t promise to be interesting and exciting all the time. I think I’m learning to write and blog, and your help is much appreciated.
X
I tried to draw a ‘real’ shibui. I’m not sure I’ve actually got the right idea, but anyway I started with an ink pen held lightly between thumb and forefinger. As I breathed I let the lines wander across the page. These are the purple marks. I even rested he pen on my hand and let it slide down in a wide, slightly jerky, motion…. Then I found ideas coming into my mind, faces, eyes, animals, a skull. Icecream, figures standing and crouching. I decided to add colour. I hope the drawing expresses emotion, and thought. I realised this morning that I had drawn environmental themes. These include a polar bear on cracking ice and a tree dying in the heat. A possible wolf skull and a blazing sun setting fire to the world… Its called Releasing my mind.
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Mallaband-Brown