New paintings and regular art updates.
I found an old sketchbook I used to take to a drawing group about 15years ago. I used to concentrate on portraits.
This was at a local pub and over a few years the group grew. It couldn’t last sadly as the pub closed down.
It was good to find these today. I need more sketchbooks though!
X
I’d like to be silly, daft, funny, have a laugh. But recently I’ve had to become, as my hubby calls me ‘ captain sensible’.
The thing is I’m his carer. I don’t like thinking about it but he has mental health issues and I have to keep a level head to keep him safe. But I don’t like it. I have to negotiate with him when he has manic ideas. I have to think through what he can do. I sometimes feel like a jailer. And yet I’m being sensible. I don’t think he should go and find a newt and put it in the pond, or buy another three bicycles to add to his collection of ten he already has. Or come home with another tree for our wooded garden. Some things are simple negotiation. Others are confusing. He buys ornaments we don’t need. He spends money in one particular shop on stuff that’s basically junk. But he’s happy. But they must see him coming… I worry about some of the things he declares he’s going to do. I won’t discuss them here. I can’t describe the anxiety he goes through every day, over things I would call trivial. I try and hold it all together and then live my life on top of that..
X
I’ve just been reading a Facebook post discussing whether spring water is better than tap water, on the premise that tap water had more minerals in it.
I know that in Britain the water quality is regulated and that government checks that quality regularly.
Water from springs perculates through rocks with minerals in them. Over thousands or millions of years they pick up the minerals as they are dissolved by the water (rainwater will also contain dust particles from the air, and organic matter from the ground before it gets into the rocks). Then it depends on the geology. That’s why we have hard water and soft water. In some springs the water can be hot. Some were used by the Victorians as purgatives as they contained high levels of things like sulphur. They were used as cures and remedies, the idea being that they cleansed the body.
Modern tap water contains a few additives like fluorine. But in measured amounts. My dad used to call it ‘corporation pop’. Not dangerous.
I took another look at this post about map reading and suddenly saw a cat. I’ve written about finding things in wallpaper, or ink blots or all sorts of different things including the front and back of cars. Grilles on cars can look like grinning mouths, headlights like eyes. I love seeing animals and faces and objects in clouds. Sometimes it drives me mad when I see something over and over again. Once seen, never forgotten. Life is strange, the mind is stranger.
X
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.
X
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.
X
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
Mallaband-Brown