Tuesday 1 January 2013

New Year ramble


First a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year to all my readers.

The picture is just a sketch of some of the children who were here yesterday evening, we have been entertaining family and friends over the Christmas and New Year period and I have just taken a blog writing break while everyone else plays poker, or with their thesis.

First the pinch and a punch business from my webstats, here is the link http://michaelsbookshop.com/laptop113/ this is only significant to other Thanet bloggers, but roughly forms a popularity chart.

Staying with the theme for a mo; do you say?

A pinch and a punch for the first day of the month:

A punch and a kick for being so quick.

A stamp on the toe for being so slow.

Perhaps someone says, “no returns.”

Or how about; a flick and a kick, or, a punch and a blow.

Does anyone say, “white Rabbit.”

There is surprisingly little about this either on the net or in the obvious reference works, Brewer doesn’t mention it at all.

One important anniversary today, it’s forty years since we joined The Common Market, later to become the EEC, European union or whatever.

Perhaps forty years are enough, it is certainly looking as though the top European politicians are looking to put together some sort of inferior membership for the UK as we seem to be looking for a reduced level of membership.

I am trying to learn to use acrylic paint at the moment, the main problem seems to be stopping it going hard on the palette when you want to stop, I have modified a culinary implement to this end.

A quick sketch of the poker players, ink isn’t very forgiving before ones hand and eye decide to cooperate.

John Holyer has just emailed me the picture I took from the Eastcliff the other day, which he has adjusted.


Here is the original one.

and here the modified one


The business with the acrylic paint worked, the paint is sitting on wet kitchen roll round the edge of the dish, two fairly wet kitchen sponges in the dish with clingfilm over it and 48 hours later the paint is still perfectly ok to paint with.

Leaving it out on an ordinary palette and after about four hours it would have only been fit for the bin.

Painting with it is another matter, I may require lessons, the cheapest thing to paint acrylic on seems to be thick watercolour paper, you paint the back of the paper with acrylic paint to stop it curling up, then turn it over and slap it on the front.

This is cerulean blue at the top, yellow ochre at the bottom the two colours loosely mixed on the paper in the middle. The paint behaves differently to watercolour more going on the paper than going in the paper.


Same colours with watercolour, doing the same thing

I will try and ramble on here if I get a chance.


9 comments:

  1. Will these paintings be worth a fortune in years to come?

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  2. Yep, that's similar to how I keep acrylics usable. I also use greaseproof paper on top of the damp bed of kitchen roll, with the paint on the greaseproof. When I'm done, throw away the greaseproof and the kitchen roll can be used again.
    Also, putting the covered palette in the fridge helps extend the paint's life (as long as it doesn't freeze) but allow to return to room temperature before use.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the tip ARtist, I will give it a go, at the moment my problems with acrylic paint are rather like those of Paddington Bear and the marmalade.

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  3. http://youtu.be/P2nlGN6aS8g

    Talking about flights over Thanet, which were weren't but will no doubt do again some day. Here is a sound that was once briefly familiar over Thanet, thank God. To me this evocative sound is soporific and has a beauty, such that one could almost make love to the music.

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  4. MIPT you will need to scroll through to hear the Merlin.

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  5. The thought of your wrinkly undercarriage being exposed for a soft landing has put me off my tea John. A nice trip down memory lane though for the few remaining older RAF types in Thanet. And the engine noise.

    Nothing ever happened with night flights other than the councillors always agreeing to them (as now with KLM) even when banned, or Infratil and TDC removing the monitors to play the noise-what-noise-we-have-no-records game.

    A Police investigation will bring it all out into the open rather than councillor and civil servant collusion for cover-up.

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  6. Acrylic is generally better used in a buttery consistency as an oil paint alternative, than as a highly watered down watercolour substitute where the pigment particles are liable to show, either that or use an extender. Nice to see your acrlyic tests, it does have a habit of drying quickly.

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    1. Bit like painting with glue I thought, I think I will give oil another go and come back to it.

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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.