New paintings and regular art updates.
Every week Esther Chilton gives us a challenge to use a list of words and write a set number of words..
This week’s is 55 words including :
Morning on the reef. A yellow crab skittered through the labyrinth of coral. It was headed to its feeding ground on the other side of the bay. But the cruel sea washed over and soaked everything in a deluge. Waves like great wheels curved up and back. In a moment the crab was washed away.
Writing is hard sometimes
Thinking of things to say
When I’m exhausted
Thoughts stray
Are unkempt like my hair
Struggling to make sense
Of my course through life.
I’m writing in a book too
Fighting with prompts
Trying to decide
What to say and do.
I’ve joined a small writing group in my home town and we are being given prompts to write about. I’ll write up another one later but here’s a poem I did on the spur of the moment when I misheard the prompt Loss as Gloss:
Gloss over your loss
Hide it behind your mind
Don’t let it take hold
Your thoughts must not fold
Into a melancholy way
So be quiet and say
My life will be OK?
If I can find my way.
Esther Chiltons weekly prompt was light. As I’m feeling rather sad it bought out a feeling of regret in me:
Light, a rainbow effect, but black? Darkness, hidden, lonely. Why do I want to sit hidden in the dark as the days sparkle around me? Is this my fate? I need to escape into light, but by the time my sad thoughts allow me it will probably be raining. We have been singing “this little light of mine” at choir recently. I need a glimmer of hope. X
Writing group today, I sat and sketched a couple of the group. Most of the stories and poems are autobiographical, I want to be more fictional. The woman writer was very atmospheric, giving a feeling of ‘place’. Using unusual descriptions to evoke childhood and adult memories of being drawn back to the sea. My poem about love was well received. I’ll keep going.
There is a new community project nearby and I went up yesterday to have a chat and try and feel a bit more engaged with people. Various things are happening including knitting and crochet, crafts, painting, and writing. It got me out of the house and helped save money on heating. While I was there I did a sketch of a couple of the attendees.
They called me their resident artist which I thought was rather sweet, although there are lots of other people creating artwork there, so it’d not really an accolade I should accept. But it is giving me the opportunity to maintain my skills. I don’t shake as much when I concentrate.
Today was different, I went to my group meeting for my mental health, it’s another craft group, but after I’d had a bit of breakfast I felt really icky, I ended up coming home early, mostly feeling overwhelmed and tired now. But I must try and continue with art, it’s really the only thing that keeps me going.
I joined a small writing group today. There will be writing prompts which I might post here. Like a pile of off cuts on a table, I think I need to put the bits of paper together to create a coherent image. It is like seeing a Rorschach test and being able to tell a narrative based on those ink blots. I might try and see what else I can do with this? I can see faces and a bird and animals in this image. Pareidolia again.
The obligatory post on Facebook was asking if you knew what these were to prove you were a child of the 90’s. Why? I knew what these were before the 90’s!
Most people answered these were from fountain pens, but I disagreed, these were from cartridge pens.
A real fountain pen was one with a bulb in it that you squeezed to suck the ink up, or a lever on the side that squashed the inner bulb flat and when it was released pulled the ink in. I always used quink ink.
The cartridges were from cartridge pens, you just unscrewed the back half of the pen and swapped them out when they were empty… The only risk was if the cartridge leaked, the top end of the pen had a bit of metal that pierced the cartridge to allow the ink into the pen and nib. Sometimes you would end up with a pocket or pencil case full of ink if they leaked.
What’s your favorite time of day?
I can’t post a picture because my WiFi is not working. But I can describe mid afternoon. On a sunny day, a gentle breeze. A patchwork of blue sky and fluffy white clouds. There may be a scent of rain after a passing shower. Ideally I would be looking out over a valley with a small stone built village at the bottom next to a stream. In my memory I can see large oak trees, ash trees, beech and weeping willows. There are blue or purple hills in the distance.
Birds are singing. Robins, blackbirds, skylarks. Looking for food for their broods of fledglings. Sounds of running water from the stream and ducks quacking as they glide across the local pond.
The UK can be overwhelmingly green in the spring and summer. Autumn isn’t always as colourful as fall in America. But what it lacks in reds and oranges is made up for with fruit ripening on blackberry bushes, raspberries and the mushrooms snf other fungi in the hedgerows. And I love a quiet winters afternoon with white snow.
The hedgehogs will be sleeping on autumn days, waiting for cool and misty evenings. Life can be calm in these dreamy days. It’s not all wonderful but I’m thinking of an idyllic day.
A writing prompt from Esther Chilton.
My favourite season is Spring. The anticipation of warm weather to come. Flowers and buds emerging after a bleak winter, and birds, bees and animals taking advantage of the newly green fields.
But to be honest this year the, spring seems to have started, but winter is still here in July. Low temperatures, low pressure and 80% of July’s rainfall in just 10 days in the UK has made for a dismal start to the summer. The jet stream is south of us scooping down cold and wet air from the Arctic.
Meanwhile Southern Europe is baking in record breaking heat with numerous deaths.
Hopefully it will turn into a mild autumn. Unless the weather morphs into a more wintery scene…..
Mallaband-Brown