Halloween Photos

Applying the fake blood.

Gruesome action as Scamp looks on.

Shoulder barging at Filey. We went to Filey yesterday as Mark had the day off.

Top photos Hull Fair. I went with Eleanor and Holly the other week. I could have taken some excellent photos of the rides with Eleanor and Holly on them, but, as is the way with these things, I only had a chance to take this picture before the battery ran out lol

I've cracked it!

Here is my first digital artwork. It is inspired by Diane Clancy's Animals in Flowers, and is a picture of Tessa among the flowers on the Common, where she often roamed. This is the only picture of Tess to hand, and I will do a proper one of her when I find one.

Happy Halloween

This is Eleanor and Holly last year, going trick or treating.

She is going with Jack, Alex and Stozza tonight as a lady vampire with lots of makeup like Morticia Adams, and Alex is coming round today and I am taking pictures so watch this space. Jack's outfit is a black woolly hat pulled over his head.

Nice photos digitalised

Nice pics all. A few of my husband Mark. I cannot emphasise enough his good qualities. In fact, some members of my family have taken to calling him 'Saint Mark'.

I like doing this. I just need to work out a way of getting the photos larger which I will do eventually but if you click to enlarge you get the full effect. They do look like paintings.

Eleanor's New Glasses

These are Eleanor's new glasses. She wears them all the time, even at bedtime. She only takes them off when she absolutely has to.

She is very vain about them and here is a picture I discovered on my new camera which she had taken herself.

Her previous glasses were all light pink, chosen by me, which did not swamp her face and were but these are glasses which make a bold statement about being a glasses wearer and being proud of it.

Holiday Snaps in 'Paint and Ink'

More playing about with the Serif.

I am really pleased with these, and may do them properly tomorrow after scanning the photos at the library on my dogwalk.

I have loads of great pictures of my kids all over Britain, but am worried about the safety aspect of putting them on a blog. This sort of thing is ideal because you are just left with iconic images.

Top photo - playing air guitar with nets at Durdle Door, Dorset.

Second - Mark and the kids at the Jurassic Coast.

Third - Kids at Portmeirion in Wales where they filmed 'The Prisoner'.

Digitalis

I am quite pleased about this. I have been dipping my toes in the waters of digital art. I have had the Serif programme for about six months, and today I started to use it. I have been cutting out shapes, and tomorrow I may superimpose a shape onto a background lol

It has a function which changes photos into different painting styles, a few of which are here.

I thought the Love/ Bird egret Dancing Swan lake was a quite good idea but let down by the presentation, but it they has the 'professional' touch, and looks like it has been done in paint and ink.

Two Things Big/Little

A big mother sheep and a little baby sheep sheltering from the wind on the North York Moors.

Two Things Black/White

In Praise of Small Animals

Recently our last guinea pig Daniel passed on at the grand old age of seven.

Eleanor had wanted a cat like her friends Karis and Kirsten (their Mum's called Kerry) but because we had a dog that was not an option so we got some guinea pigs and Eleanor called one of them Misty like the covetted cat. Guinea pigs, even two of them, are probably a poor second to a cat, but she looks very happy to be getting them here on her fourth birthday, and these are not even pedigree guinea pigs as you can see. Misty is not pictured as he was the shy one. When Eleanor took one of her pigs into school she decided that Daniel would be the best bet for the same reason.

As it was winter and they were babies we kept them inside all winter in this hutch. They had had a narrow escape at the pet shop as they had come down with something but the animal-loving student who worked there had kept them alive hand feeding and had paid for the veterinary treatment herself, and was glad they were going to a good home.

I cannot abide the way rabbits are treated by some people and imprisoned in a hutch, and our guinea pigs have always had a lot of freedom, which probably accounts for their longeivity, in fact I'm sure it does. This coupled with the fact they have been fed on select weeds collected on my dog walks, the vegetable left-overs of Christmas dinners and so on. I will always remember the first time we took them out of the hutch and let them run about and Daniel the guinea pig manically whizzed round and round in circles, jumped in the air and generally went crazy while we laughed- he had tasted freedom. (I remember my Mum and Dad's dog did this too when she was bought from from the Blue Cross.) We did have to take them outside eventually as they had a tendency to knaw our wood furniture. The kids used to carry them about inside on terry nappies.

Although eventually most of the looking after was left to me, Eleanor still remained interested in her pets, and used to walk them up and down on red guinea pig leads and she and Holly used to carry them about in their handbags.

Two Things East/West

Mosque

An ancient Eastern temple
Carved in the whitest stone
Embodies an ancient religion
Spiritual and ascetic throne
Fashioned from a chocolate box
Capitalism at its indulgent best
Temporal, packed with dark delight
Fleeting pleasures of the West

Two Things Solid/Pattern

Coal

Coal is a solid and a mass
Heavy, lumpen, used for fuel
But made up of intricate layers
And patterns of the molecule.

Two Things Solid/Pattern

Here is our little guard dog sitting on the windowsill.

His solid and scruffy form makes a great contrast with the delicate lacy pattern of the lace net curtains.