Tins ‘n’ Things

I haven’t fallen off my perch although some of those people who entertained me in my young adulthood have. Clive James made me guffaw, particularly with his late night television programmes and his lighter pieces in print, although I have to be honest and say that I struggled with his longer, denser literary pieces. Latterly, I enjoyed his observations, often about his elusive end, while enduring a terminal illness.

Being too young to have appreciated his comedy work, I remember Jonathan Miller as a thoughtful talking head, someone whose utterances, on a surprisingly broad range of topics, you could trust. It was the sincerity in his face and his resonant voice and authoritative accent I think.

The death of people one kind of grew up with is a bit chastening and you begin to realise that your generation is next to go. Sometimes, like spiky-haired Gary Rhodes, who also died yesterday, aged 59, sooner than you’d like.

Anyway, still alive, I’ve been splattering my creative stuff on things. Things such as these wooden cones that I bought in Sostrene Grene …

They’re supposed to resemble Christmas trees. I don’t know whether they worked as well as I hoped. On balance, probably not.

I had a bit of trouble with the tins I spoke about in the last post too. I envisaged mackerel. They kind of turned into tuna, so I went with that …

Then not wanting to paint any more fish, I chose to spatter another tin with paint. Great fun, to be honest, and I managed not to ruin my trousers.

Altogether more refined was my teabag urban landscape.

This evening, it was back to fish. I’m determined to draw/paint/print mackerel. So I kind of cheated, just to get more used to the shape and the markings. Some were traced and transferred onto lino. I’m going to try to carve and print them. Hopefully they’ll look a bit like this.

Finally, I’ve been pressing things …

Surprisingly easy and pretty effective.

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