Category: art

#1282 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn 2026, art, Family, Firestone Bay, Scrag End of Summer, Summer1 Comment
© theoldmortuary

One week left of August and I feel the itch and anticipation of the arrival of September. Although I have never formally worked in education I always feel the 1st of September is a far more significant New Years Day than the dreariness of the 1st of January. The summer months, especially the summer months of 2026 have imbued a more relaxed feeling to life in general and to my art based creative life. September 1st will be the time to galvanise and gird my arty loins.

Girding your loins means to prepare yourself physically, mentally, or emotionally for a difficult task, a hard challenge, or a conflict. It functions like saying “brace yourself” or “roll up your sleeves”.

The last of my, summer, arty play dates with granddaughters occurred this week.

She sailed off to France yesterday taking us from 3 arty workshop girls down to none.

I don’t buy any special, inferior, art materials for them . They use what I use. I fret a bit about my  fancy brushes but not much else. I do catch them diving into my store cupboard for stuff I haven’t laid out for them but so far we have not had any arty drama’s beyond the normal drama that 3 girls can create in any situation.

Official Summer 2026 has sailed. We are in the liminal space that I think of as the ‘scrag end of summer’

Scrag end is an inexpensive cut of meat from the neck of a lamb or mutton. It contains a lot of bone and connective tissue, but it is very flavorful and becomes tender when cooked slowly.

I very much enjoy the ‘scrag end’ of summer. It is more tender and a little slower, more relaxed and less pressured. Poignent because it is an end but enjoyable because, for now, the actual end is unknown and unexpected pleasures will occur before that happens.

#1278 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Firestone Bay, Hybrid Printmaking, SerendipityLeave a comment
Partial Eclipse 2026, work in progress.© theoldmortuary

It is just over a week since I bobbed during the partial eclipse with 9 other bobbers. At the time the experience was both peculiar and beautiful.  Peculiar because we swam for virtually the whole of the eclipse experience. Quite often with special Eclipse glasses which gave us a completely safe experience to view the eclipse in real time, but our vision  was limited to black and red vision of the black moon obscuring most of an orange sun . While our bodies were experiencing the sensations of the sea and our ears were hearing the happiness and exclamations of a bay, full of happy swimmers.

When we didn’t have the glasses on we were experiencing ever changing highly saturated colours that slowly darkened and changed as the moon crossed the sun. One of my Eclipse glasses visions was of sparks of light like golden diamond twinkles firing off the perimeter of the sun. I think caused by drops of sea water on my eyelashes or on the plastic lens of the eclipse glasses.

I knew I wanted to create an image of the experience, but which one?

Until I decided to throw caution to the wind and put all my recollections into one image. Not as mad as you might think for someone who worked in medical imaging. For example a CT scan image is made of many amalgamated pictures taken from lots of different angles at slightly different times.

My hybrid printmaking technique with photography and painted or mono printed images uses exactly that technique, modified a little.

Yesterday I had to get a bit of a wiggle on to get this image off to a printer for a test run Giclee print. It is still not the finished article but I will need to see how a print looks.

So that’s where the image is currently but what about my personal recollection?

Really one of the loveliest things I have done in a really familiar home environment. I still haven’t quite found the words to describe the experience. But I have found the many layers of a half decent picture.

#1276 theoldmortuary

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, domestica, Serendipity1 Comment
Current work in Progress

26 years ago I started my journey towards taking a degree in Fine Art. Something I actually wanted to do at 18. Suddenly art began to create a bigger need for stuff. Evening classes and short courses prior to this moment tended to provide materials so art stuff had not left a big footprint in my storage. The next 26 years have been significantly different. Two homes have had actual art studio spaces. Two have not, and currently I have a hybrid space that requires me to be more sensible about what I keep and what I don’t. However the garage at our current home housed 26 years of my creative left overs. Like a snail I moved arty stuff around the country physically and in my mind. As an art gear archive the garage was pretty poor, it had been packed by our removers and there was no logic to it.I also never imposed logic on it, choosing to pick bags at random when I needed something For some inexplicable reason on the last day of the fifth heatwave the time had come to sort  and clear 26 years of stuff that might come in useful in a creative way. Sorting and going through it all showed my artistic journey. I can see the same decisions made on something created 8 years ago and in the work in progress illustrating this blog. But the truth is I can make those decisions without filling a space with the odds and ends of 26 years of creating. Time for stuff to be gone.

After the clear out

The garage is clear now, two trips in the camper van did the job. A small amount of materials went into my current workspace.

I had thought a clear garage was just a long overdue project, but it turns out it is not just the garage that is clear. My head is significantly lighter. A good few hours of going through and getting rid of old paintings and the associated materials I gathered on the way has been astonishingly cathartic.

What a puzzling and delightful outcome.

#1270 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn artLeave a comment
Working lunch.

The 5th heatwave of the year has slightly driven me indoors to start some post summer art projects early. The research and thinking/tinkering process has been ongoing for some time but yesterday was the first paper and pencil/paint  action.

But the heatwave drove the day and my daughter and granddaughter wanted to do a cool dog walk and then an even cooler dip in the tidal pool. I suppose I have never taken the time to sit on the edge of the tidal pool in peak summer and just enjoy it as a safe play area and people watching zone. I love it best when it is empty or has just one lone figure. 6 people as in this picture are way too many. Imust have cropped out 30!

The heatwave drove us to have a very continental lunch. Cheesy chips from a cafe and fresh figs from the tree on the tennis club.

I have no idea when my current arty project can be shared. Contemporary Witches could be the working title.

Quite a lot of witchery work was achieved yesterday. The tidal pool came into its own while I was ckearing up after the creative phase of the day. I submerged one of my very simplified water witches under the waters of the tidal pool. Giving myself an accidental pool witch.

©theoldmortuary, The Firestone Water Witch

I love the struggle of creating art, the struggle is where lovely accidents happen. In setting out on an actual project it seems I have found myself a side project. Heatwaves have a lot to answer for.

#1268 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, dog walks, Procrastination, StonehouseLeave a comment
Early morning boat

A fifth heatwave looms, so Lola and I set off early to get a decent walk under our belts before things get too warm for her paws. Instinctively she pushes the walk , pressing me to add her favourite sniffy places  as appendices to my planned and intended walk. At a basic level I need her to have had a couple of effective wees and a poo. She knows this. In the pouring rain both are achieved with speed and she turns her head for home with determination.

Days like today she  holds on to her eliminations, rationing them until she has had her desired length of walk and her fill off sniffing other dogs wee messages.

I look at little boats and plan a painting.

Although right now I am supposed to be focussing on figure drawing not solitary row boats. Or indeed clearing out the campervan after a weekend trip. The art of art as procrastination.

#1266 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, SerendipityLeave a comment

Another morning camping in an orchard with just the sounds of nature and sizzling bacon.

Our evening was spent listening to the sound of a birthday party in a house hidden completely from view.The playlist was  eclectic and suggested possibly a 60th or 70th birthday. It sounded like fabulous intergenerational fun and ended at 10pm when the valley fell silent.

Our day was spent in our favourite Cornish town. Doing familiar things. I have known and visited Penryn for more than 40 years.

A friend grew up there. More recently I attended one of the local universities to do some post-graduate study.

Falmouth Intensives, a personal view.

The town is home to two university campuses now. Something unimagined 40 years ago. We are regular visitors and our favourite chair, at home, was bought here on ebay in a very shabby state but is now a thing of great beauty and comfort.

In all our visits we have never needed a supermarket, which is why a giant Asda was a complete shock to me. Walmart has a share in Asda. This particular Asda has all the larger and finer points of Walmart without the sales of firearms. I only needed 5 things. It took me 45 minutes. I could never have predicted that beauty products would be hidden in an upstairs corner!

The shock of the new!

We returned to the familiar territory of coffee shops and charity shops.

Status Quo and a surprising brand of crisps.

Sometimes our granddaughter, Bonnie is called SuperBon.

I am not certain the illustration is shouting out the product.

#1263 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Photographs, art, Words, Plymouth Sound, Plymouth, Stonehouse, Hybrid PrintmakingLeave a comment

Does every picture tell a story?

I think most do.

This one tells of the late summer clear up. All family guests have moved on to different holiday destinations and our home has eased back from peak occupation. The crocs belonging to three small girls are gathered in a bucket by the back door while the girls themselves are away on different holiday adventures.

Using a similar colour scheme I am trying to tell the story of a set of swimming steps that are much quieter this week now the heatwave has moved on.

I am at heart a story teller either with words or pictures.

A regular blog reader, who is familiar with these steps, said yesterday that I had made them look very posh. That was not the intention, but I agree. They may have been posh once upon a time but shabby shic is a better description now. Most of the time they are entirely tolerable and are regularly washed by incoming very high tides.

At night they can be a gathering place for  smokers of weed and men who like to do a wee. Not so posh then. Not so great as a swim destination either. Not  so great a picture.

But I don’t need to tell that story about these steps.

Years ago a little pair of discarded crocs by the back door of the actual Old Mortuary used to break my heart.   A small person and her family  had left us to live abroad. That would not have made a great story or a great picture.

3 pairs of crocs in a bucket is a much better story.

However in the interests of story telling I also wanted to show the earlier set of steps at the peak of the August heatwave. I am not interested in the crowds of people who used these steps recently just the steps as a metaphor for extreme atmospheric and radiated heat. Just too much heat.

The heat blistered out of the rocks at night. And the sea languidly lapping the steps, warmer than we have ever known. Not quite cooling enough perhaps. Oleaginous even.

A different colour scheme. A completely different story.

#1346 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, art, Footling About, Hybrid Printmaking, learning, Meddled Photography X Watercolour, Medical imaging, Serendipity1 Comment

Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?

As a lifelong image maker the outdated technology I miss the most is the magic and alchemy of a photographic or radiographic darkroom. The basic skills of wet processing and later automated processing, that are enhanced by the knowledge and experience of knowing how to manipulate negative and positive images to create the best possible outcome. 

So many mental filing cabinets of know how have been stored in my brain gathering dust since the dawn of digital imaging. Until a February in Penzance when I had a lightbulb moment and decided to start using some of my old analogue knowledge alongside the digital knowledge of contemporary image making.

I am a time-hopping digital immigrant. Using skills taught to me by people called Sheila and Ron in the 70’s ,an era when a dark room technician could turn a disaster into an acceptable picture by clever thinking and the use of tricks and accuracy to make an image better.

This is the first successfully manipulated image created by overlaying three separate digital photographs to create one picture.

The feet below are my most recent  meddled image.

The others are just some of the picture journey. The acceptable part of the journey. Not the many many images that have ended up in the digital bin

#1343 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Devils Point, Firestone Bay, Hybrid PrintmakingLeave a comment

My day was hijacked , first by a sound then an image and then later again by another image that just nagged away at me until I had sketched,painted and photographed it into existence. Until I was done.

Lola and I were out walking early this morning , almost from the start we were followed by the slightly worrisome and slightly exciting sound of someone hurrying with a suitcase on wheels. At one point we were overtaken by a woman who had laden herself with everything she would need for a day on the beach. She was a woman on a mission. As she sped past me I grabbed a quick photo which I have altered to anonymise . There was no beach, we were both walking at exactly high tide. She was way ahead of us and as I looked over the wall she was patiently waiting for some beach to appear. By the time we passed again, on our way back, she had claimed her spot on a tiny ribbon of wet pebbles.

She had unloaded and set up a one woman encampment. Sun lounger, parasols, cooler box and books. She was oiled up like a sausage on a barbeque . She was not alone, the thin strip of pebbles had grown and she had neighbours, but none who had hauled quite so much stuff.  When I got home I decided to donate her my empty beach of yesterday.

It was the least I could do. I had an interesting afternoon sketching her arriving on an empty beach then watercoloured and did a pen and ink sketch before sticking them all together digitally.

The Early Firestoner ©theoldmortuary

Sometimes I just have to get an image out of my system. I hope she had a great day, she really deserved it.

#1535 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Plymouth Sound, StonehouseLeave a comment

Funny things can spark a creative patch. For me it can be a deadline, a creative itch, or a commission, but this month I am aware that my creativity is directly linked to an ‘artistic difference’

I have been mulling over my comments and the comments of others.  I am in the happy place of being content in agreeing to disagree. Now, my happy place thinking may affect decisions I make about which arts organisations I join in the future, but it may not.

But for now I am glad my painting mojo has returned with some lovely energy.

These two people on the beach are not having an argument. They are inspired by the many memorial benches I pass on my daily dog walks. The combination of names on benches who have enjoyed overlooking Plymouth Sound are  not always traditional couples,sometimes they are friends, neighbours  or colleagues. Names however come and go in fashion. Some pairings may never be popular again. Were my parents to have had a memorial bench it would be dedicated to Joy and Keith. One set of grandparents would be Gladys and Leonard. Or in a different marriage Gladys and Reginald. Not pairings I expect ever to be fashionable again.

This couple sit, overlooking an unchanging seascape. I sat them on wooden deckchairs to enhance the timelessness of the scene. The figures are androgynous and could be any two people of any gender or age or race. Most importantly they could be Edith and Herbert, Sharon and Tracy or Amir and Tulip.  Just two people enjoying the view any time since 1886 when the deck chair was first patented

I needed a bit of space to add the quote. So the painting needed a good gap where not much was happening.

The artistic difference was based on a statement that ‘real artists’ don’t use digital manipulation tools that could be considered to be on the slippery slope towards AI .

As part of my creative process I use digital manipulation on occasions, but also get painty and dirty just like any other real artist.

Here my initial sketch and the subsequent watercolour have been digitally combined.

Firestone Bay at Low Tide © theoldmortuary

Later on I may work into the watercolour with pen and ink to get a similar appearance. 

I do rather love the effect a minor disagreement has had on my creative thinking and more than happy to agree to disagree with’real’ artists. Real or not I have been hard at it today.

Detail of the finished piece. I am undecided about my ultimate presentation. As above with lots of space in landscape format or tighter cropped in Portrait.