My First Tartan

Where has the sun gone? I finished my latest painting a few days ago and have wanted to photograph it for my blog. I like to take photographs of my pictures outside for the best light. This time I had to photograph my picture on the floor of the dining room in front of the patio doors.

I have always been fascinated by tartan patterns. I try to work out which of the interlacing colour layers are above and which are below. I came across some corrugated cardboard when unpacking something new that we had bought. The card was there waiting to be used for something. Then it came to me, it reminded me of the weave in tartan. So there we are. So (sorry about another so in such a short space) I intended to produce a tartan with some of this card in it.  I like the earthy colours of rust and was going to produce a “McRusty” tartan. The finished result turned out to be lighter and redder than I originally intended so this one is called the “McRedder” tartan. It was a bit of an experiment but it seems to have worked in part.



"McRedder" Tartan 16" x 12"



A closeup of my tartan



A closeup of the card used in my tartan




a real tartan for inspiration



another real inspirational tartan

Rudbeckia

My darling wife works hard in the garden and the results of this hard work are wonderful displays of flowers. This year my wife grew some Rudbeckia plants. These plants have been a fantastic display of sunny yellow flowers for what seems to be months.  They look like little suns.  Like the suns that children draw.

Inspired by these plants and finding a canvass in the back of my workroom (calling it a studio seem pretentious). One sunny day a few weeks ago I went into the garden and laid myself flat out in front of one of the Rudbeckia plants with the canvass and a pencil. A few moments later my wife came rushing out asking me if I was ok. She had seen me flat in the garden but did not see the canvass. She thought that I had collapsed.

Armed with a mastic gun I outlined the flowers and produced the following picture. I like the naïve effect that the mastic gun only allows.

Size 16" x 20"

The flowers on the picture are still blooming whilst the plant is now fading.

Why did I think that I could copy nature.

God gave us nature to be inspired by, not to copy it. We mortals are incapable of copying nature and still retaining the impeccable beauty of all things untarnished by man.

I had not done much arty stuff over the summer and I though I would paint a copy of a photograph I had taken earlier in the year. Half way through I realised my mistake (copying nature). I then thought  I would experiment a bit and try to make the foreground flowers more prominent and the background flowers recede. I gave the background a thin wash of white which achieved what I intended. I made the foreground flowers more prominent by outlining them using a mastic gun. I liked the result of this. In the end I have not achieved a picture but I am in the process of trying again using the mastic gun. I live and learn (until I make the same mistake again).



18" x 14"



Roland (as I remember him)

I remember this man from my childhood. He would walk around the town dressed as probably best described as a Dandy, along with a silver tipped walking stick. I remember he once got on a bus that I was on. He stood and talked to the conductor and got off a few stops later without paying. I was possibly nine or ten at the time and I thought that he must be some one special not to have to pay. The thing that I kept in my mind was his red spotted neck scarf. His suit and hat were black making his scarf more prominent.  A while ago I came across a black and white photograph of Roland in book. It did not look right without his red scarf. Hence my ink, pen and red watercolour copy. I know it is not great art to copy something but it is good to keep my draughting skills in tune (weak excuse I know).

Do not try this at home. Some inks when watered down turn to a greeny blue colour. If you must, try Rotring ink. 



4" x 5"



PS sorry about the reflection in the photograph, I did not want to remove him from his frame.

Holes

This piece is inspired by the bark of trees, the textures, the overlapping and the undulations of the bark. The colours are derived from a piece of flint that I have on the windowsill of my work room.  The pieces that I have brought together to form this work, are bits that I have collected, thinking at the time of collection, ‘I think I may be able to use that at some time. Well this sometime has happened.  As with most things I was not so pleased with it when I had first completed it but I have been away in Aberdeen for a week and now my opinion has changed that is why I am now posting it.

Size 8" x 8"

I HAVE DECIDED WHAT TO DO.

Thank you all for your input into my quandary.

ArtPropelled I love your stripes suggestion. But I cannot get the idea of stripy toothpaste put of my head now.

Anna thank you for making me feel not alone in my what would seem to be an illogical attraction to the cone.

Kathryn thank you for’ Give a cone a home’ and other ‘conical’ suggestions.

I have decided keep the cone on the windowsill of my work room along with my collection of interesting stones (do not ask). My cacti have accepted it and it seem to be happy. I am not going to paint it now; I am going for the natural concrete look.

But more importantly you all made me laugh, thank you for that.

Can Someone Tell Me What To Do With This Concrete Cone?

What shall I do with this small concrete cone? (playmobile figure added alongside for scale only)

Let me tell you the story before you tell me what to do with it.

I went to a ruby wedding celebration party at the weekend and had a good old time.  At the party there were about ten tables, each having at least two displays of balloons. Each display consisted of three or four helium filled balloons on long strings tied to some sort of weight. At the end of the party a guest next to me took two of the balloon for her young daughter. I assisted in the untying them from the weight. Normally the weight is a plastic bag filled with water. This weight felt different. We stripped away the decorative paper covering and to my surprise, we found this concrete cone.

Concrete is made using cement and some form of aggregate. Cement is made by grinding limestone and shale and calcifying in a massive rotary kiln. This is then ground in rotary mills to form the dusty cement that arrives in bags to the DIY store. Many moons ago a worked as a design engineer for a cement manufacturer. The efforts and energy to produce cement are enormous. The limestone is quarried; rocks the sizes of a small car are dumped into enormous crushers. The kilns are several hundred feet long. The Cement Works have their own high voltage power supplies.

To me all this makes cement a precious resource to be used wisely. Making balloon weights which will be binned after the party is not wise. I cannot see many people collecting these after the party and taking them to their local recycling centre for crushing and reuse as hard-core.

Now to “what shall I do with it part” of the post. I like the tactile smooth conic shape of the weight and I what to change the destiny of this weight. I am driven to painting it and having it as a decorative object. The problem is that I cannot decide whether to paint it shiny red or matt white.

In the famous words of the Big Brother. ‘You decide’

Intellectual Property Rights of an Image

Following on from my Rusty Bits post http://sparkartsquaresblogspotcom.blogspot.com/2011/06/rusty-bits.html I have now completed my picture. It took me a lot longer than I anticipated. Whilst painting this I was talking to a friend about the process of making the iron that was used to make the ship that inspired my picture. The iron ore would have to be mined and transported. The coal used to fuel the blast furnaces would have to be mined and transported and then converted into coke and probably be transported again. Limestone would also be required to form a flux for the process. This would have to be quarried and transported. All these material would be processed in a blast furnace and an iron billet produced. This billet would the hammered and rolled to form the iron plates. Steam hammers would probably be used. Again coal and a water supply required. The iron plates would need to be shaped, drill and hot riveted to form the ships hull. Just imagine how much of the earth’s resources and human effort was used to make the hull of this ship. It is highly probable that life was last in one of the stages. Most certainly some of the worker would become deaf from the hammering and some miners would have become ill because of the working conditions. My painting is homage to all these workers.

Now where does ‘Intellectual Property Rights of an Image‘ fit with all this.

First who owns the iron of the ship? It seems to me that as it is now rusting and forming iron oxide (which is what is mined in the first place), ‘Mother Earth’ is reclaiming what is hers. Dust to dust.  By this does ‘Mother Earth’ own all rust?

Who owns the image that I produced? Who has the ‘Intellectual Property Rights’ to it?

Consider the passage from ‘The Mirror of Reflection’ by St Francis of Assisi –

“ For in a picture of our Lord and the Blessed Virgin painted on wood, it is the Lord and the Blessed Virgin who receive honour, while the wood and the paint claim nothing for themselves; …..”

Applying this to a secular image, say my ‘The Rusty Bits’ picture, the image, the ‘Intellectual Property Rights‘,  must belongs to the rust its self. And therefore to ‘Mother Earth’

The paper and paint that I used were produced using the earth’s resources and as such must also belong to ‘Mother Earth’.

Thanks to Colin for the informing on the forming of iron.

Thanks to St Francis for his words.

Rust, Rust, Glorious Rust…

I like rust. I think it is eye-catching with its crumbly, crusty, flaky, earthy colours.  

Rust (Iron Oxide) is formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the presence of water or moisture. Any iron mass will eventually convert entirely to rust and disintegrate. Dust to dust.  

The colours of rust are fantastic, earthy colours. This is a photograph I took on holiday at the beach. Look how the colours of the rusty metal barrier are reflected in the earthy colours of the large flint type rock just behind it.

Rust and Rock

To see my daughters photographs of rust look at - http://kathrynashcroft-papermouse.blogspot.com/

‘A bug is a good as a hug’

I have just been away on a weeks holiday staying in a cottage on the north coast of Norfolk with the family. What a fantastic holiday. During the week my granddaughter made some furry bugs and we all thought no more about them. Except that my granddaughter did. As we were about finishing packing the cars she asked ‘where are my bugs’? When found she announced that she had made one for everyone as a present and handed them out, specific bugs for specific persons.

What a lovely gesture, the quote that came with them is ‘A bug is a good as a hug’



My Granddaughter's Bugs



Whilst still on the theme of bugs. My daughter never moves far without some sort of camera and my daughter decided that her and me (or should that be she and I) would go walk about down the cottage lane whilst the others prepared the evening meal. The lane was full of interesting things to photograph. One thing that was noticed was that there are lots of ladybirds around. Endearing  aren’t they. Here a snap of a couple that I spotted.



Two Ladybirds that I spotted



If you want to see the best ever photograph of a ladybird look at Kathryn’s post -

http://kathrynashcroft-papermouse.blogspot.com/2011/08/looking-anywhere-other-than-where-im.html

Flowers of Scotland

I am not a flowery person but in recent years I have come to find flowers inspiring. The flowers of Scotland are no exception to this.

I like the contrasts that they give -

The varying colour pallets of the flowers and foliage.

The varying forms of strong and frail structures, some symmetrical, some asymmetrical.

The variation of form, some simple, some complex.

The groupings, some are loners, some huddle together and some of differing varieties huddle together to form little radiant communities.

And now few snaps of Scotland’s flowers that illustrate my likings. This includes some flowers that other may call weeds (and the odd butterfly thrown in)

 

Return From Bonnie Scotland

I have just come back from a ten day tour of Bonnie Scotland with friends. I have been to Scotland many times before and hopefully will go there many times again. The heart of Scotland never changes for me. The country towns are now suffering from the insidious creeping onslaught of the globalisation by high street stores, many of the small specialist ‘Scottish’ shops have disappeared  but the heart is still there for me.

The heart of  Scotland is in the … people who live there, so friendly and helpful … the sun… the showers… the mist (it rolled in from the sea at the Mull of Kintyre, just like in the song)… the Castles… the Brochs (early stone round houses)… the laughs with friends sharing a bottle of wine whilst watching T in the Park on the telly...the waterfalls…the steams… the Lochs…  the old harbours and ‘puffer’ boats…the Mountains… the forest walks…the moss…the highland Coos… the thistles…the steam train ride to the Mallaig….the remains of deserted crofts…. the stories of the hardships that the Scottish folks went through  (a tough hard life)… the drives along single track roads… the wildlife… the flowers (both wild and formal gardens)… the good food… the afternoon drink and cakes… Catherine’s porridge (the best I have ever had, I mean the very best ever. Stay at Glenshieling House and sample it yourself)…  the big high street stores may be making the shopping experience sterile but the heart of Scotland is still there.

And now a few snaps that I took to remind me.