Tag: dailyprompt

#1621 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By Juliet CornellIn SerendipityLeave a comment

If you had to sum up your life philosophy in one sentence, what would it be?

Probably this. It is not a unique thought but part of a quote from a book I picked up in a hotel bar.

The book was largely forgettable but the quote stayed with me.

Waldmeer by Donna Goodard.

No judgement at all about the book, I didn’t have the time to fully read it and chanced upon this quote.For completeness I might add.

There is a depth to life that only comes from our connection to other people whilst walking a dog.

Walking my dogs in the parks of London and here now, in my coastal community in Devon I have engaged with some fascinating people. People with dogs are obliged to stop and talk with one another as their dogs engage in bottom sniffing. Some people without dogs want to stop and talk with me because they want an interaction with my dog. All these random conversations can lead on to longer conversations as your dogs decide that you will circle the park or peninsular together.

Of course I joke about adding the dog bit. But without igniting a dog v cat debate, I would say in my fifty years of being Team Cat there was never a point where owning a cat expanded the depth of texture, friendship or communication of positivity with other humans. 13 years of Team Dog and I have lost count of all rhe gorgeous and delightful interacrions that my canine companions have engineered.

Hugo with his/our gang in Dulwich Park. The High Court Judge, The Principle Dancer at the Royal Ballet, and the owner of an International Model agency. Just dogs doing their thing and humans doing the same. But in any other life those humans would never have charttered so freely.

There is another interaction with an artist, so famous there are T.V programmes about him. Hugo felt that love was in the air as did the very famous artist whose owner was not in the least bit bothered.

He would have been bothered in the future if any puppies were created because Hugo could not help himself when art was being created. Not really a problem at my level of the business but nose prints at his level may not have been quite so acceptable.

#1619 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By Juliet CornellIn art, Paintings, Photographs, Royal William YardLeave a comment

Share a few recent shots from your camera roll, no context needed.

No contexts.

Blogs do appear out of nowhere quite often. Sometimes, like today, my blog host WordPress drop a prompt that is easy to respond to. Easy for me today, because I had been prepping for today’s blog in advance.

My apologies if anyone spots a context. It will be entirely co-incidental.

October is the month of harvest and as such fruit and vegetables pose, ready to be turned into paintings in the darker months of Winter.

A Friend recently donated, to me, an unwanted photographic umbrella.I was unsure how I would use it, but it is small and doesn’t take up much space. It has a lovely gold reflective surface.

I can pose my models in the yard and catch the sharp angled sun beams in the umbrella.

I had designated this week an art admin week. No dabbling. There was also some Tennis Club admin and life admin. I made a list in order of importance.

Life Admin and Tennis Club Admin are unpredictable and come first. This week Art Admin was not allowed to be all arty and unpredictable.

Frame.

Mount.

Sort physical portfolio

Photograph fruit and vegetables.

Fix broken things.

By the skin of my teeth all arty tasks have been achieved. I am a little in love with the results created by using the relective umbrella. Which made me reflect on my general fascination with umbrellas and how they can be photographed or painted. I trawled my photo archive on my phone and found a gorgeous image from 2019. A complete and happy accident. An illumination festival was being held at the Royal William Yard, an outdoor event, blessed with the very best of West Country weather. 3 days of an after dark art installation, with 3 days of torrential rain that only arrived after dark.We probably attended on the second or third day when the organisers had, prudently, decided to provide attendees with a clear plastic umbrella so that the effects of the illuminations were not lost in the black shadows of peoples regular umbrella’s

This one lucky shot gives me such pleasure.

The No Context rule definately simplified the umbrella blog I was going to write. Another time.

#1617 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By Juliet CornellIn Firestone Bay, Hybrid Printmaking1 Comment

What’s one piece of travel advice you always follow?

I always take my travel painting kit. I used to always take enough books, my painting kit and Tea Bags. I still do but now the books are on Kindle on my phone. Since I have been creating hybrid images I also keep some stock images of paintings on my phone. The full moon above is useful if a full moon event is ruined by a cloudy sky. I can just digitally stick a moon into the sketch or photographs of the full moon event I am attending. Asian full moon events are so colourful and exciting, it can be a real disapointment if the principle character fails to show up, or rises behind a massive building development. It also gives me the freedom to put the moon in the best possible place for the location and occasion.

Last night I needed my full moon painting much closer to home. It was a full moon and the ‘Bobbers’ like to swim at high tide on a full moon.

Storm Austen and Storm Boelo had other ideas. Having completely reorganised the weekend they had left an unnamed love child in our bay. A nasty storm infant who thrashed about, causing mighty waves and whose breath created thick clouds that completely covered the moon. Worse than that South West Water had released sewerage into the sea nearby. Presumably hoping to blame the storm baby. The companies Share Holders must be very proud.

Storms, named or not do not stop dog walks. A night sight shot of our swimming bay captured every reason why it was not safe to swim last night.

A full moon placed in exactly the right place aesthetically makes me a happy woman.

For anyone interested in the painterly bit of this image. I swirled a circle of white Posca pen on black paper and pushed the paint around with my finger until the paint dried.

It took me a while to get to this picture . I wanted it to look as soft and believable as possible without ever wanting my moon to look as science intends it to. More cream cheese than moon dust.

Travel advice for nearer to home.

#1613 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By Juliet CornellIn Serendipity1 Comment

What do you think is the future of AI?

The image above is created with AI using the prompt . ‘Create an image of this photograph in the style of theoldmortuary’ Similarly I have asked and got others to ask AI to write a blog in the style of theoldmortuary. Both examples were ‘off’ in so many ways that they could not be credible as unique or one-off pieces of creativity coming from my mind on a specific day.

AI is a tool and like all tools in the hands of humans there is every chance that humans will misuse it. There is not a tool in the world that was invented for good and altruistic reasons that has not been perverted for selfish, egotistical and criminal uses.

The future of AI is in human hands something to celebrate and worry about in equal measure.

Recently Google offered me an AI critique of one of my paintings. It was O.K , truthful in it’s way but nothing like the multifaceted communication a friend would give me. Or the performative input an art lecturer might deliver or the supportive discussion a committed art teacher would offer to help me thrive.

The future of AI as a tool ,just like everything else,is in the hands of humans and that is as unpredictable as the outcome of the wheel or the screwdriver.

As unpredictable as a watercolour painting.

AI also got one thing wrong. It is Pinktober not Inktober in this house.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EhbSt9P8X/

#1605 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By Juliet CornellIn Dartmoor1 Comment

What’s something you’ve done that your past self would be proud of?

I have never been to Foggintor Quarry before. But I have sat on the rocks of Foggintor Quarry for most of my life and there has often been photographic evidence of me doing it. As a toddler feeding pigeons and as an overnight reveller during Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee. A couple of New Years Eves

Now if this sounds like nothing that my past self would be proud of . I am inclined to agree, but the part of me that really loves a quirky fact feels a little bit excited to have visited the quarry that birthed Nelsons Column. The more or less central spot of London in Trafalgar Square. So wherever you are in the world the distance between your home and London would be measured to a monument built from rock from Foggintor Quarry.

10 years ago my son, Sam and I posing posing in front of Nelsons Column at Christmas time. Both completely unaware that we were posing in front of rock from a quarry that we could see from our Cornish home. As I stood at the quarry today it was possible to see the town we used to live in. Our ruverside home would be somewhere below the arrow.

We used to look out of the east facing windows on really wintery days hoping to see snow on the higher parts of Dartmoor. Sleds and snow shoes would be hastily thrown into the car. Madness to think that we were almost certainly looking straight at Foggintor. Sometimes of course it was actually obscured by fog!

The quarry had its own school. This is all that remains.

Just imagine being educated somewhere quite so bleak.

below Foggintor Facts

https://share.google/rgX9uFZE4eRtUo8bf

#1602 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By Juliet CornellIn artLeave a comment

What does it mean to be a good person?

There must be many versions of what it means to be a good person. Way beyond my level of pondering. I think a good person needs a percentage of a bad person. The tension of bad in a good person provides texture and tenacity, creates balance and perspective. Too much goodness can be pappy, flimsy…. dull.

With no bad how can you even gauge goodness.

This water colour sketch works because the pristine white pebble is both cracked and reflects the colours that surround it.

Remove the crack and something vital is lost to the overall vibrancy of the image.

The image becomes pleasing but with less of something intangible.

A good person with no bad is the same . Pleasing of course, but with no tension to frame and enhance the good.

#1527 theoldmortuary ponders

On By Juliet CornellIn Hybrid Printmaking, Serendipity1 Comment

Tell us about your morning routine.

or yesterday mornings routine.

In fact yesterdays morning routine was a monthly routine. Once a month a group of artists get together to chew the fat , plan exhibitions and share tips. We are encouraged to be creative at the same time. Multi tasking, with cake eating and coffee drinking is also integral to our decisions.

I was painting a water-colour layer to enhance a photograph that was taken two days earlier after a really lovely swim in Firestone Bay.

Water colours* combined with a photograph are how I produce my Hybrid prints. The watercolour is how I add emotion, atmosphere and vibrancy to the experience of being there in that specific moment. I also use watercolour to add the complexities of the weather and temperature of that moment.

*I mostly use a watercolour layer but the additional layer can be a monoprint,another photograph, textiles anything that can create the essence of what I am striving to capture.

The photograph this watercolour needed to enhance was good enough in its own way.

But it was bleak and chilly as is entirely normal for 5pm in mid-October. The swim one hour earlier had been unseasonably warm. We had all stayed in longer than you might expect for October. The whole experience felt like a warm summer evening, lots of chatter, a good bit of exercise.The harsh reality of the landscape felt softer and more vivid than it really was.

I trace the point where I will register the two images and then forget all about the photograph. Painting entitely from memory/imagination the sensation of the moment. Everything flows from the register point. In this case it is also the vanishing point but that is accidental

Then I just have to photograph the water colour and stick the two* images together.

*Sometimes I create three or four images to stick together. Nothing is guaranteed, the whole project can be a disaster or turn out nothing like as well as I had hoped. This one came out just as I had hoped.

The Watercolours are not wasted. I can work into them later with pen and ink.

The reason I am sharing the somewhat ponderous technique I am evolving was an on-line conversation I had yesterday with a schoolfriend.

Funny how a chat with a lovely man that I have known since we were both 11 made me distill my thoughts.

Even funnier is the realisation that only came from that conversation.

At no point in my medical imaging life did anyone accuse me of not being a ‘real’ radiographer or not giving them a ‘real’ diagnosis because I was using digital skills.

Plenty of people have exactly that opinion of using digital skills to produce art…

Plenty of people are incorrect.

The finished article.

3pm The Swim zone.

And because digital can change a mood.

5pm An early evening dog walk. Reflecting on an unexpectedly lovely swim.

#1524 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By Juliet CornellIn Hybrid Printmaking1 Comment

What’s the most underrated life skill?

I am uncertain if being kind is the most underated life skill, or the most easily forgotten. Many people view it as a weakness or something that need not apply to them. Others think it is a selective skill used sparingly at times and then gushingly like an incontinent water main. I find this sort of person somewhat awkward to interact with.

That being said I do possess some unkind bones in my body , everyone needs just a few for protection or good comedic moments. But a whole skeleton of them is not a good thing in my opinion.

People with full skeletons of unkind bones see kindness as a weakness. I think of it as a bit of a superpower. Kindness brings warmth into most situations.

Humans are funny old things we tend to remember the bad stuff or the sad stuff: the unkind words and deeds much more readily for some reason. Which is why kindness is just so important, used effectively it can make the sad and bad stuff just a little bit more tolerable and balance, where possible its nemesis, unkindness.