
Trying this as my image for woken #bandofsketchers prompt … Digital drawing of a snowdrop woken up in the spring. I have several weeks of prompts to catch up with.
New paintings and regular art updates.

Trying this as my image for woken #bandofsketchers prompt … Digital drawing of a snowdrop woken up in the spring. I have several weeks of prompts to catch up with.



Silver birch trees are much whiter than they used to be when I was a child. They still have dark marks on their trunks, like upward facing arrows. But the dirty grey bark of polluted air in the past decades has seemingly reduced. But particulates still float in the air, and carbon dioxide is increasing, so maybe the trees will get bigger as they absorb the gas?
This beautiful example is starting to lose it’s leaves. Shown against the white and blue of showery sky.

At Biddulph Grange garden last year. I’m not sure what the stone signifies, but the frothy white blossom flowers of the bush contrast with the larger strong red colour of the flowers below it. I love the combination of colours together with the green of the grass and hedging. I love coming across views like this and my phone is crammed with images that I have taken over the years.

I said we had got a white hydrangea a few days ago but it’s only just beginning to flower. It’s still in a pot, and looking closely it seems to be a very pale pink.
We had one a couple of years ago with conical instead of flat flower heads. But because it was very shady in the garden it didn’t thrive. That’s why this one is in its pot-so we can move it around… Anyway I think its lovely X.

A little dove of peace across a stylised planet earth. I tidied up the beak after taking this photo. Another miniature painting. I decided to do something more abstract. It’s based on Picasso’s Dove of peace. Just blue white and black acrylic on tiny canvas..
Enough!

View out of the upstairs window. I woke up to a sprinkling of snow. Its only a thin dusting, but the clouds are grey. Hubby’s talking about going for a walk in it. I’ve come back to bed to snuggle rather than putting the heaters on. Had a nice hot cup of decaff coffee. The weather forecast is for it to blow over. Heading east. Other places have had it far worse. But last night we had freezing rain so I think it’s going to be slippy underfoot and I’ve seen posts on Facebook about it being hazardous to drive in. The trouble with the UK is we have all sorts of weather all the time, tomorrow might be warmer and dry, or thundery, or we might get saharan dust! We don’t get used to driving in snow, it’s like iceskating once a year. You can’t be an expert in such a short time.

Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was white. I could have done snow, but by the time I’d seen the prompt it had mainly melted. Its supposed to come back but I just decided to imagine a white ball of string.

What a sky today, low sun through clouds and silhouettes of trees. This is the park we sometimes walk up to. We sit on a bench to rest, then walk down and up the slopes in the park and finally out of the gates again. Today we were tired so we walked back down the hill and over to our local supermarket. It was out of fresh tomatoes again, apparently the weather has damaged crops and British farmers who would normally grow them in poly tunnels can’t afford the heating so they have delayed growing them. Anyway that was today’s stroll. And six thousand steps!

I just looked at the sky from the other side… I mean I watched the film Gravity and it struck me that it looks much the same from above and below? Maybe the clouds are on a different scale, but they are still white and grey, the blue sea mimics the blue of the sky. We are truly a blue and white marble in the deep ocean of black space. We fall up to space, or down to earth, the thin atmosphere is all that protects us against hard radiation and vacuum.

Once I start playing with apps I go back and make new patterns. I realised that using the symmetry tool on my sketch app I can offset them so they don’t overlap, and I used various colours from the same part of the spectrum. Then I duplicated and rotated the pattern, creating a lace like design.