New paintings and regular art updates.
This was what I tried to finish painting today. I wanted to paint a cloudy sky and over painted patches with a sponge to give the clouds a fluffy feel . I even tried to paint some Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds above the mountains. They look like rolling waves on the sea. It’s a tiny portion of the painting and probably not that apparent.
Anyway, acrylic on canvas. (cheap canvas, you can really see the warp and weft.)
Sun shining through the kitchen window. My cctv camera seems to be being affected by the brightness of the low sun. All the colour is washed out. It looks like a black and white photo. You can see how overgrown it is. We really did create a wood by the side of the house. Cherry, walnut, eucalyptus, plum, apple, and other trees were planted over twenty years ago. They have grown large and healthy. It’s one way of mitigating my carbon footprint I guess.
Imagined view, I think I need to have a look at some real clouds. I’m not sure if I’m going to call this finished. Acrylic on canvas. I just wanted to paint something calm and peaceful so I created this sketch view X
Each year we have cherries and pears on our trees. The birds get most of the cherries but we get good pears, that is until this year.
We had a lovely display of blossom. The cherry and the pear tree blossomed first. Early in spring. Lots of flowers, pink and white. But I was worried because it was cold and wet and windy and I didn’t see many insects (and we don’t seem to have had birds nesting either). A couple of weeks later the blossom had faded and petals showered the ground. Then the apple tree came into blossom. The sun shone and bees arrived. Now I have no cherries, I saw the little stalks with tiny pips all over the ground, and no discernable baby pears. It’s so sad. It’s like they have given up now hubby is gone.
My only consolation is that there are lots of apples on the tree. But it hangs over into my neighbours yard and I am worried they will cut it back, and as there is a trellis fence in the way I can’t access the fruit. Drat!
I think this is wild garlic? I took the photo a year ago. I love having a, wild and wooly garden. I am concerned that my fruit trees came into blossom early I haven’t seen many insects about so I’m not sure if they have been fertilised. I can only wait.
My friend took this photo for me as the camera on my phone keeps glitching. I’m part way through painting a green woman for someone and I want the background behind her to be trees.
There are silver birches in the grounds of the community centre where I attend our art group so we went out and I chose the trees I wanted pictures of. It helps to see the shapes of their trunks and branches instead of trying to imagine them. The details of the bark are fascinating and I hope to try and reproduce the patterns.
I’ll post a photo of the work in progress later but I want to tidy it up a bit first, it’s a bit like a mediaeval illustration at the moment, I need to make it more subtle.
I think there’s a bit of Pareidolia going on here as I can see a face in the tree bark.
Twenty years ago I sketched these trees. I think they were probably oaks, a little old and tattered. I’d love to go back and see if they are still there, if only I could remember where they were!
I used to do far more pencil sketching. Maybe I should get a soft 6B pencil and start drawing again.
A year ago
We had a sprinkling of snow
Like caster sugar
Dusted on cakes
Or a shake of flour
On a rolling pin and board.
Or icing sugar
On tasty mincepies
Just a soupcon or two
Of white, powdery, crystals
Not today
It was just wet
And grey…
Working on this but the twigs are too thick and dark. I might try and thin them down or paint over them and make them lighter. I need a thinner brush, just a few bristles. Hmm…. And daylight, it’s hard painting under artificial light.
A few years ago I painted a picture of the willow pattern on an imaginary platter. I used two seperate images of a willow pattern plate and amalgamated them into one. The willow pattern has several iconic aspects. A pine tree, willow tree, three people crossing a bridge, temples, boats, love birds. I’m sure they will have explanations of what they stand for. I really enjoyed creating this. X
Mallaband-Brown