New work

New painting, based on the lower photo of Dorothy Clive Garden waterfall. I’m working from a filtered photograph of it that has added texture to it. I will try and post an update later. I was trying to find an image to work from for the afternoon at the Orme Art Group today. I was worried about the yellow and green and purple colours, are they to muddy….? But now I’ve started adding a pop of red in places I’m happier. It is something that is making me happy, so I will carry on.

Forgetting

I couldn’t find a photo of a forget-me-not so here’s a bluebell. I rushed out this afternoon for an Art Lunch session. I went and bought a couple of cakes and some sandwiches. Then I went to the venue. No one was there. We asked a volunteer but he knew nothing. Then we walked down to another building on the site, it was locked. I realised that a friend was at work on site so we went and asked her. It’s next week she said! I had got mixed up over the dates. I’m usually better than that. I hope it’s only a touch of nerves because I’m waiting fory MA result next week. X

Friend

A friend reading at Etruria Industrial Museum. The orange area is the ink from the previous page showing through. I did this with a brush pen so it works slightly differently to a fine liner pen. Dark areas fill in better than with a thin pen. I might add texture in Photodirector later. It’s great to try and switch things round and explore different ideas. Practice in anything improves what you do. I’m also trying to teach myself a bit of lino cutting. More of that soon.

Etruria Industrial Museum today

View through silver Birches of three chimneys at Etruria Industrial Museum today. I think only the short stumpy one on the right is at the flint Mill, the thin metal one and the tall brick one seem to be to be on the side on another part of the industrial site. The buildings there look derelict with holes in one of the roofs. I hope the large chimney is stable. Sketch done on the balcony at the back of the museum.

Blossom and bricks!

An odd combination

Walking up our hill there is a section of unadopted road that has a massive pothole. Someone has filled it in with old bricks and stones and bits of pottery shards. As I looked at it today I thought it had filled up with snow. But no, it was pink blossom nestled in the dips and dents. I reminded me of things floating in a river. I’ve taken this photo because it was an interesting juxtaposition of material, soft and hard, dark and light, natural and man made…

Camellia

Walking today, did just shy of 3.5 miles. We saw this lovely Camellia in someone’s front garden. As the sun lowered the colours shone out. As we were walking we were discussing whether to add plants to our garden hedge that is getting rather thin and straggly. This is now a candidate, together with hawthorn, buckthorn and Holly. Maybe with a bit of beech hedging added… Its nice to contemplate the spring garden. Soon there will be frogspawn and cherry blossom (not together, obviously!)

Two sketches today

Two sketches in Etruria today. A corner house and the White bridge over the Trent and Mersey canal. Both were done in response to an online virtual sketch out with #uskstoke (Stoke Urban Sketchers). There was a zoom meeting, but I couldn’t join as I was out and about and had no Internet access. These are hopefully going to be included in an online ‘street’ of people’s images that represent the city. They were very quick sketches and I tried to draw the corner house a few times, it was difficult to get it to fit on a small sketchpad page…..