Back again (version 10)

and saying, I'm going to post more (again).

No, seriously I am

Honest

Stop laughing!

What do you mean, you've heard it before....

Oh well, the best laid plans and all that.

There has been creativity, but not a huge amount as life has got in the way,

2 birthdays (me & eldest) so weekends have mostly involved food, wine

and not having art stuff all over the dining table,

plus being dragged off to the pub by friends

(it's a hard life, but somebody has to do it).

Also a lot of it has just been background stuff that's not really blog material,

but I figured I'd pop a couple of things up so you know I'm still in the land of the living

Simple birthday cards with stamped tissue and music script

Work on a desert island disc CJ

and finally, the start of another portrait.

Well, that's it until next time.

I'll try and get around the blogs and leave a few comments, 

and hope to see you soon

but not next weekend, I'm off gallivanting again

(I told you, it's a hard life)

Watching paint dry....

I suppose we all do it, and this one has definitely been one of those :)

A friend sent me a text earlier and asked me if I'd created anything, to which the answer was

"it's an abstract industrial thing, sort of rusty looking".

Well, what else would you call it?

This started off with a bit of reminiscing about things that were invaluable but that

(as a civvie) can no longer be obtained by simply walking into the G10 stores,

such as black nasty*, brown shiny** and green hairy***.

Another blast from the past is Red Death, aka Red Lead or Lead Oxide Primer, which,

as the name suggests was a bit dodgy and is now probably a banned substance!

Anyway, the discussion brought back a guy with a car that had various rust spots,

so he covered them with black nasty and red lead,

but got carried away and painted the whole car!

Now, as it happens, Adirondack's Terra Cotta acrylic is the perfect shade for Red Lead,

so I decided to have a go at another abstract piece. 

I had no idea where this was going, it was a case of apply a layer of something,

wait for it to dry, then do something else.

The layers include:

Terra Cotta acrylic,

patches of other acrylic,

diluted acrylic ink,

embossing paste,

more acrylic ink,

poster paint,

and quite a bit of water.

The site glass is a few drops of ink sandwiched between microscope slides,

and a layer of paint behind it.

The 'toxic leak' is diluted gold acrylic.

* Black Nasty is tape. A bit like duct tape, but black and probably more versatile!

**Brown Shiny is also tape, but it's brown and shiny, instead of black and nasty.

***Green Hairy isn't tape, it's string. I bet you can't guess what it looks like ;)

75

This was a piece that came from out of the blue,

and it hasn't had hours of agonising and planning.

On Thursday I put the van in for its MOT, so had to walk the last mile to work.

I stuck my earphones in and wandered along without any real cares,

just enjoying the first signs of spring appearing.

The music playing, at random, was OMD-"Architecture & Morality",

and somewhere at the back of my mind the seeds of this took root;

no real plan, just the idea of doing something sort of industrial and grungy. 

The canvas already had a drab background on it from a previous piece that was recycled

(steampunk moth, which I was never 100% happy with),

so it was just a case of adding some detail.

I chose 75 as OMD was the abbreviation for engine oils when I was serving,

and 75 was the most common one.

Simple things, as they say.

Take this waltz

This is a page in the latest Desert Island Discs CJ that's passed through my hands from CollaborArt.

There's some wonderful songs available on this particular CJ,

but there were really only two that I wanted

and one of those had already been taken,

so I was left with the beautifully haunting "Take this waltz"

from the amazing Leonard Cohen.

I'll admit to being a late convert to his works as his music wasn't that highly featured on forces radio; so the very limited exposure I had was normally along the lines of

"Leonard Cohen? Don't go there, it's depressing".

Thankfully when I got back over here I came across "First we take Manhattan"and was hooked, so went out and found more. 

If you don't know any of his music, go and seek it out. 

It may not be to your liking, but you may be surprised.

Hope springs eternal

Inspired by a friend who's been through the mill lately,

but always comes up smiling, and sees the bright side.

It's something I try to aspire to.

It doesn't always work, but I usually get there in the end.

The alternative is to turn in on yourself and become bitter, dis-spirited and angry. 

And as another friend has pointed out, it must be tiring to be angry and confrontational all the time.

This was painted a couple of weeks ago when we had an end-of-winter snow flurry - although, if you listened to the media we were on the verge of the next ice age and due for a complete melt-down of civilisation. I mean, it must have been at least 2" deep in some places.

Anyway, in amongst all this doom and gloom,
spring has sprung and there's colour popping up outside the house;

snowdrops, blue & purple crocus and daffodils.

Hope you're all getting that spring feeling too.

(Acrylic on canvas)

More Attitude!

The next two pages in Sian's "Attitude" pair journal.

The pages are based on a poem I found a while back whilst mooching around the web. The original version can be found here.

It's been a busy couple of weeks here, hence the lack of posts, but there's bits of art in hand, so hopefully there'll be more posts soon (where have I heard that before?).

Fairies

"What it needs"

muttered Miranda,

"is wine.

And chocolate.

You can't go wrong with chocolate"