#Catitude

sparta spindle

Greetings Trained Monkeys. Sparta Puss here. The hairless apes have left the pooter box unattended again. I’ve had a fun 24 hours. Last night, I hid in the rhubarb patch when the she-simian was looking for me to get me to come in – I’m curfewed from dusk because I’m a murderer. She ran all over the place, then hassled the he-monkey to go out in the dark and look for me in his pyjamas and slippers in the rain. I sauntered in after she put some Dreamies into my bowl. Hilarious.

Then this morning I bit the female when she tried to brush me – “you’ll get furballs”, she said and gave up and went to put something called antiseptic cream on her hand. Then I went looking for somewhere to sick up a furball. The apes don’t have nice carpets, it’s all wood and tiles but there’s one rug in the house so I threw up on that. Then this evening the she-ape was lurking by the stairs where I was sitting, with one of her dirt sticks and a buk. She makes strange marks with her dirt sticks in the buk and then says it look like me. She’s an idiot! Anyway, as soon as she began, I started fidgeting and kept it up, even though she was cooing at me and asking me to sit still for a while because I was making it impossible for her to ‘draw’ me. Hah! That’ll teach her.

 

Random Faffing

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I’m trying to loosen up and be more spontaneous when I’m making art, I tend to faff around and fuss and get lost in detail and it’s hard for me to just let go. I’m taking a leaf out of the Surrealist artists book and doing some random creative exercises. I coloured a load of paper with pastels a while back, with a few other people, making random marks all over the sheets. I ripped them up and today I just threw them down and photographed them. Digital cameras – brilliant! The background is a sheet of paper I’d brushed with my home-made walnut ink. I don’t know what will come out of this. I’ll carry on and see where it gets me ….. or not.

 

Pantycelyn

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Husb and I took a stroll along the magnificent Pantycelyn Road earlier. It has one of the most beautiful views in Swansea, over the bay to north Devon. I think Pantycelyn means the Holly Bridge in Welsh. I drew quickly with Daler Rowney medium willow charcoal sticks into a Khadi handmade paper sketchbook in the late summer evening sunshine.

Another Yew On Ethical Paper

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Another lockdown walk this evening and another charcoal drawing of a grand old yew tree in Cwmdonkin Park. There are loads of yews there, gnarled, ridged, wrinkled. Some of them have branches that have grown back into the main trunk of the tree, other branches wrap round the main trunk like they were ivy. I’m drawing into a lovely Khadi hand-made paper sketchbook. The paper is heavy, textured with deckle edges and it’s an ethical company too.

The Old Yew And Rhubarb Crumble

6 Cwmdonkin

Husb and I are still following our lockdown exercise routine most days, even though the restrictions are much more easy going now. It’s a good system that’s kept us going for the past four months so we might as well keep it up. I stopped to do a charcoal sketch into my Khadi sketchbook of this formidable old yew tree in Cwmdonkin Park. It’s gnarled and twisted and the shapes writhing all over, in and out of it, trigger the imagination. If you click on the link, you’ll find information about the childhood of the poet Dylan Thomas’ in the park.

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I also made a rhubarb crumble – our back garden is a rhubarb jungle – it’s been fantastic this year but I’m running out of ideas for using it up. Luckily it’s popular in my family. I didn’t get to take a photo of it before my nephew got his share – he’s a strapping lad and a massive crumble fan. Husb will see the rest off.

 

Funny Old Day With Plums

plum tarte tatin small

It’s been a funny old day. Quite busy with work, then sorting out my vegetable plants, redesigning my computer station so that I can work standing up, Tai Chi followed by a cold shower with a nod to Wim Hof, the car died and got towed away for scrap, my first reflexology treatment for four months, discovered an unconscious man slumped in a doorway, argument with the woman from emergency services because I wouldn’t touch him – no PPE and it’s a pandemic, he was breathing, no blood, no signs of broken bones, just unconscious –  waited until the ambulance came with staff maxed out on PPE, got a Chinese takeaway.

Then I made this plum tarte tatin. And Husb and I ate it. The plums are from my own little tree in a pot in the garden. The plum fruit moths had them earlier in the season, but I waited for them to leave and apart from a bit of a blemish on the skins, they were fine. I don’t mind sharing. The fruit tasted delicious.

Family, Zoom And Scraps Of Colour

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Every week since early in lockdown we have had a family quiz with relatives from as far afield as Australia and Ammanford. It’s helped us all to cope, especially when the lockdown was at its toughest, although our Australian family are now in a second lockdown. Zoom came along at the right time.

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I used up some more leftover paint and paper and had a play with squiggles earlier too. I like the way the heavy Bockingford paper breaks up the paint. I guess I’ll eventually use these scraps in some collages.

Pollution And The Seagull

 

gull 2

I spent the morning at Swansea Print Workshop – we are doing a very limited re-opening now that the Covid19 restrictions are relaxing. I want to finish an edition of screenprints I made from a drawing of a stuffed seagull back last Autumn. I printed a load of seagulls on newsprint while I was getting the strength of the ink right so I used a couple of these today to try out different backgrounds. I’m thinking of making a photoscreen from fruit nets to create the background. There’s so much rubbish in the environment, loads of plastic pollution, so I’m going to use some with the seagull. I’m not necessarily going to use these colours but at the moment I’m trying to get the composition right.

 

Spitting Like Turner

temeraire 4

I finally finished Friday’s fake painting, J. M. W. Turner’s “The Fighting Temeraire”. I decided after a few weeks in lockdown, when it looked like we were in for the long haul, to improve my painting skills. So I joined the Friday lunchtime “Cheese and Wine Painting Club” (which has nothing to do with cheese or wine). I like studying from great artists but normally I stand in front of them in museums with a sketchbook and draw, so taking apart their painting techniques is new to me. I’m learning loads about how to handle paint and brushes and how to layer paint onto the canvas. I’m also getting used to painting on canvas. I used to hate how it felt beneath the brush, it’s still not as nice as paper, but it’s growing on me.

In the film of Turner’s life, with Timothy Spall, it showed that Turner spat on his paintings a lot. So I gave it a go.

 

The Cheese and Wine Painting Club is family friendy and free or a donation from those who can afford to. It’s led by the artist Ed Sumner who is an excellent teacher. It’s informative and FUN. Here’s a link to the next one, which is a Banksy.

 

Still Squiggling

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Had some more leftover paint again today so I played with it and had a squiggle session on some leftovers Bockingford paper. I’m beginning to enjoy the feel of the paint on the paper and the way it layers up and changes. Oh, and I used a pallette knife as well – advanced stuff 😀

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