Month: Feb 2022

#133 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Colour, Home TownsLeave a comment
©BBC News

Colour is forcing itself to be a returning theme this week. Storm Eunice is whipping up a storm as I write. Eunice is said to be the worst Storm in more than 30 years. And has, unusually for the UK been given a red warning status. The last time I experienced a storm of this magnitude I was living in Brighton. As it happens, serendipitously, yesterday, I was painting some more colour cards for some of the places I have worked. Last weekends homework on the colour course I am doing. Hastily, I might add before this weekends homework arrives in my inbox.

I put three places together yesterday as they share some colours.

Brighton, Marylebone and the City of London.

It would be all too easy to depict Brighton with the colours of the rainbow. It is one of the beating hearts of the British lgbqt+community.

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/help-advice/faqs-and-glossary/list-lgbtq-terms#:~:text=The%20acronym%20for%20lesbian%2C%20gay,%2C%20queer%2C%20questioning%20and%20ace.

Like a lot of places, Brighton, when you live there, feels many different things not just the one bold stereotype. At the outset it might seem strange that these three places are linked in my mind by their colour memory palate. They are all places where I worked for a long time and although work can dominate everyone’s thinking at times. The antidote to work is what we seek to refresh our minds and spirits to enable us to do the best job possible.

All three of these colour cards have a nod to my working life by having the predominant colour of my working clothes, scrubs. After that despite being strikingly different in real life, the colour palates are remarkably similar because I always seek the same sort of things to provide mental recovery. I love architecture, parks and walking when I need to clear my head. For me these colour charts are an instant return to a time and place. The only major difference is that Brighton has the sea while the other two are deeply urban, most importantly they are all a happy place.

Time now to enter Eunice and walk the dogs…

#132 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, HomeLeave a comment

Bobbers on a stormy day. Looking for Spearmint the seal. This painting was a piece of weekend homework.

https://tansyhargan.com/

It was a quick sketch but completed with mindful, meditative colour mixing and intuitive painting. As it happens it is also predictive. The weather forecast for tomorrow is predicted to be very stormy. No swimming or seal spotting for us. Storm Eunice is about to batter the southwest coast. This morning, though, all is bright and beautiful.

#131 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Home TownsLeave a comment

My apologies for the blogs being more than usually peppered with art stuff. I am in the midst of an on-line art course called Finding Your Colour Voice. I am trying to complete the course initially in a little over the ten working days and two weekends. My plan is to do each day’s tutorial and weekend projects as soon as I can after they drop onto the website. After that I have another 4 months when the content is available to me to study more at depth. Precious Pondering time is mostly colour related at the moment.

My project yesterday was to create colour charts from a huge variety of sources. I made a start by producing 4 colour charts of places from memory. I’m going to share two of them as they are my short term memory efforts. Unsurprisingly they are of places close to home and easily visited to check out how accurate my memory is. I also have recent photographs to share my thoughts. On reviewing yesterday’s work, I am immediately struck that with these two I have very specifically created a winter colour palate. The other two places I completed are clearly less season specific, I haven’t visited either of them since the pandemic started.

I am particularly pleased with the Cornish colours, I wanted to show the softness of the county. Something that is less obvious in the brashness of summer. Something that doesn’t show well in the photograph is the greigeness that cloaks the county frequently.

Stonehouse is altogether ‘harder’ despite being geographically not far away. It does however share the greige and that colour,or indeed sensation is much better depicted on the Stonehouse colour chart.

A tremendous exercise, many more charts to paint…

Artist / educator

#130 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, SerendipityLeave a comment

February weather was as colourful yesterday as my art life is all day, currently.

Juggling the needs of life, dogs, blogs and an on-line colour course.

Artist / educator

Immersion technique is vital in both sea swimming and working through the exercises set by Tansy on the course.

I am pretty much on target with life, but the colour course not so much. A daily lesson is uploaded and there are weekend projects.

Here we are on Tuesday already and the paint is only just drying on Fridays tasks. I’m using watercolour which dries in seconds so I am substantially behind.

So, for me, Tuesday is the new Saturday. Tomorrow is of course Wednesday, a day I have high hopes of catching up. I have one of those 8-8 time slots for a booked gas boiler service. 12 hours in which to wait for an engineer to arrive when in theory I can whip out my paint brushes and fill my time with colour.

In truth I have four months to get all the colour course tasks completed. This is not good news for a recidivist procrastinator.

The End

#129 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Beach Life, SerendipityLeave a comment

Our second Sunday in a row when the weather determined our location. Without dogs there is often the option of spending a stormy, wet Sunday, hunkered down in front of a fire with a good book or a jigsaw puzzle. With dogs that option is not available. Another option is to just put on the right clothes and get on with the day. We took a different option and headed for the North Coast of Cornwall. Weather forecasts suggested, correctly as it turned out, that there would be an improvement of the weather on the north coast for a couple of hours after lunch. Let’s not pretend swapping coasts gave us a balmy carefree walk in sunshine. It gave us blustery, stormy weather with a side serving of weak sunshine but most importantly there was no icy, horizontal rain capable of penetrating any tiny failing of our waterproof garments.

Hugo and Lola had a blast finding friends and seaweed. The humans skimmed stones and took in the vast expanse of crashing waves as their mental and physical cobwebs were blown out into spume of the incoming tide. We also did our bit and collected waste plastics and other man made detritus from the beach. The odd shell might also have been collected.

Mussel shells were vivid as they were tossed around on the edge of the crashing waves, inviting us to pick them up, but the minute they dried out they lost their glossy intensity. Flipping them over gives a whole spectrum of softer but long lasting colour. Every bit as lovely but different. Just like swapping coasts can be.

#128 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn HomeLeave a comment

100 shades of greige. Serendipity took me to a strange place recently. Strange for no other reason than greige is the opposite of my actual life while I am doing a colour course. A local department store has refurbished its cafe during lock down and come up with a colour scheme devoid of any colour.

With a nod to the city’s nautical history, boats are the theme of the pictures on the wall. All colour sucked out of them by a digital photography programme.

Not to be outdone the wallpaper celebrates a neutral palate.

Not that I helped myself any, ordering a pot of tea was hardly going to set my colour world alight.

Is neutral really a good look for a post pandemic world.?

Thankfully this restaurant does a fine breakfast and we populated our time there with colourful memories. Too much neutral made my eyes hurt…

#127 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Birthdays, Bobbing, SerendipityLeave a comment

A birthday bob yesterday with some of the usual surprise guests. A warship sailing past as we are waiting to get in. We love a busy swim. However it may appear, we were not lined up to wave to homecoming sailors but were waiting for Spearmint the seal to swim away from our bay so we could start our swim. We love her but she is not invited to our Gatherings because there are restrictions and responsibilities that protect her. There was far more action in the next bay and attracted by the noise she swam off. We jumped in but probably had only ten minutes in the water before she returned. Current advice is to get out of the water and give her 100 metres space.

Clearly she was going nowhere this time, so we retreated to eat birthday cake. Some of us had hardly got our shoulders wet. There was great disappointment but copious amounts of cake cheered everyone up and nature provided the perfect birthday card.

©Debs Bobber

#126 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Devon1 Comment

Complicated image of the day. Last night we went to Exeter Cathedral to see The Museum of the Moon.

A seven metre representation of the moon by Artist Luke Jerram.

About

A quote from the website.

The moon has always inspired humanity, acting as a ‘cultural mirror’ to society, reflecting the ideas
and beliefs of all people around the world. Over the centuries, the moon has been interpreted as a god and as a planet. It has been used as a timekeeper, calendar and been a source of light to aid nighttime navigation. Throughout history the moon has inspired artists, poets, scientists, writers and musicians the world over. The ethereal blue light cast by a full moon, the delicate crescent following the setting sun, or the mysterious dark side of the moon has evoked passion and exploration. Different cultures around the world have their own historical, cultural, scientific and religious relationships to the moon. And yet somehow, despite these differences, the moon connects us all.

Museum of the Moon allows us to observe and contemplate cultural similarities and differences around the world, and consider the latest moon science. Depending on where the artwork is presented, its meaning and interpretation will shift. Read more in Research. Through local research at each location of the artwork, new stories and meanings will be collected and compared from one presentation to the next.

#MuseumofTheMoon

My complicated image at the top of this blog was a happy accident. Whilst standing in the queue for coffee I found one of those mirror trolleys that tour guides use to point out architectural features in the ceiling to avoid their visitors fainting due to overstretching their necks.

What better way to view a ‘cultural mirror’ than through an actual mirror. There was a very stern message not to move the trolleys.They were in a dark corner. So I just contorted myself a bit and got the best shot I could without breaking any rules.

An indoor moon and Mediaeval Cathedral looking like the best roller coaster in the world.

#125 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Colour, SerendipityLeave a comment

Not a muddy puddle, yet. Tasked by my on-line art course to take 3-4 hours creating a medatitive painting. Using only red, yellow and blue watercolour with colour mixing and just painting shapes. With the washing machine and dishwasher taking the load I set up the radio. Set to talk shows so my synesthesia was shut out of the process. My synesthesia bends and blends music and colours together and often informs my art, but not today. Watercolours are tricksy things and quickly turn to mud even when you least expect it. Who knew 3 hours could pass so fast.

Then just a minute on digital manipulation and something lively appeared.

Time to return to to the domestic machines and do some meditative domestic. No amount of digital tweaking makes that any more thrilling.

#124 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, SerendipityLeave a comment

I’m a bit over commited for this next couple of weeks. I’ve enrolled on an on line colour course and yet I have given myself no protected time in which to do it. Life spluttered along today with two things cancelled one thing added and a regular commitment re instated. Yet I did find time to do a colour mixing experiment and watch a video tutorial. The colour mixing turned out not to be as easy as I had first thought!

But in a positive way.

Yesterday I cracked on with both the exercise and some homework. Tomorrow I just need to catch up on the actual project for today and then being ahead with the homework should have me almost up to date by Friday. Three hours of meditative painting for me tomorrow.

In Wordle news, there was a shock in store today! 5 letter words with American spelling have made themselves a part of the game. I did not see that coming. Something else to think about with this new obsession. Should have realised of course as it is an American game.