walking

Sketchbook Page

Angela PorterLeave a comment

Sketchbook page

Yesterday, I spent some time adding colour to paper to add to my custom sketchbook. This is one of the papers that I created, with an abstract drawing on it, that is finished enough for the sketchbook.

The artwork measures approx 4″ x 6½”. I used a piece of ClaireFontaine Paint-on mixed media paper which I coloured with Distress Oxide Inks followed by some sprays and splatters of water to create a distressed look. The colours used were Seedless Preserves and Fossilised Amber.

I first drew the basic outline of the design with a M Pitt Artist pen from Faber-Castell. To add colour to the design, I used Distress Inks in Seedless Preserves, Fossilised Amber and Ripe Persimmon like watercolours.

Then, I started to add patterns, lines and stippling to the design to bring out the patterns and add depth, interest and dimension.

I think it’s worked out fairly well. I may well go back to yesterday’s ‘Blessings’ artwork and add colour and more patterns to it at a later date.

I went out!

My blog post is a little later as I decided to go out for a walk this morning. This was a big deal for me. Especially after the effects of the high anxiety/stress I experienced last week.

I went to my local cemetery, Glyntaff Crematorium. It’s fairly large, with lots of paths and roads sectioning the cemetery up. I wandered around the older section, which is full of fascinating funereal sculpture. I had my DSLR camera with me, and managed to take over 100 photos this morning, not just of gravestones, but textures too.

It was so nice to be out in fresh air, moving my body around more than I have done for nearly four months. I had nice music on earphones so that any loud sounds wouldn’t startle me. There was work going on around the crematorium as well as grounds work.

It was also nice to drive my car again. It’s been a week, and I really miss the freedom of just being able to take a drive. It’s important that we still stay home as much as possible and to limit our time where there are people. I think my choice to visit the cemetery was a good one. Very few people, alive or dead, haunt cemeteries!

I think I fall into the group of people known as tapophiles – people who are interested in cemeteries, gravestones and funerals. It’s not a morbid interest, just an interest about the changing styles of funerals, funerary sculpture , practices and how they change over time with society and culture.

I discovered the fascination with gravestones when I walked to and from school through this cemetery. It took me longer to get home than it did to get to school. On the way home I had the time to linger and explore and indulge my curiosity. I remember being too scared to look in the chapels there, but enjoyed popping into the columbarium, which has recently been renovated and reopened.

I think I’ll be looking for other cemeteries fairly local to me to visit in the weeks ahead, ones that offer me a good walk as well as interesting graves to look at.

A colourful, small reef illustration

Angela PorterLeave a comment
Reef Illustration ©Angela Porter | Artwyrd.com
Reef Illustration ©Angela Porter | Artwyrd.com

A little reef illustration.

Yesterday, I got round to colouring my little reef drawing. And it is a little drawing – the paper is just 4″ square (10cm square).

To colour it, I used my Chameleon pens – both the Color Tones and Color Tops. I finished the illustration off with some small dots from a white Uniball Signo gel pen.

What I didn’t expect was that the pigment from the Uniball Unipin pens bled somewhat. I don’t remember that happening before. Mind you, I usually scan and print my black and white line art and colour the print. I didn’t do that today — something to remember for future reference. This is why some of the colours look a little dirty.

All the same, it’s a colourful, happy little illustration. I also like the thickness of the main lines with the variation in line thickness in the details. Diversity in line weight is something I need to remember when I draw digitally. Looking at my latest colouring templates, I think I may have used a line that was too fine. Again, this is something that I need to consider in the future.

It’s always lovely to do artwork like this, using traditional media and working in a familiar, comfortable style. It gives me a chance to reflect on what I’m doing elsewhere and to adapt and change what I’m doing to improve it.

Creating this artwork has given me ideas for some projects in the future. More on that when they come to fruition.

So, Angela, how are you doing today?

I’m doing OK. I’m feeling a lot brighter as the aftermath of Monday’s bombshell fades.

I’m aware I really don’t get out of the house and move my body around much. I either get engrossed in art and the day slips past me quite quickly. Or, my anxiety rears up and try as I might to overcome it, I just can’t seem to make it out of the house.

After a conversation with a friend the night before, I remembered that I like to walk around cemeteries and that my local cemetery might be the perfect place to go for a stroll.

And I did. Go for a stroll.

My love affair with cemeteries started when I used to walk to and from school when I was 11 and 12 years old. Walking to school was always a bit of a dash. However, I could take my time on the walk home to wander and explore the cemetery.

Even on the gloomiest, darkest winter afternoons, I never got freaked out by the cemetery. The dead have never scared me. The living, however, are an entirely different matter. The living people around me were the source of my traumas and CPTSD. The dead could do nothing to me that was any worse than the living.

I found the variation in headstone styles fascinating. I found I could chart the change in fashions over time. I also found reading them fascinating as some of them could tell me about the deceased and their families. It was history related to real people and brought them back to life. It wasn’t the dusty, dry, uninteresting facts in the history lessons I had to endure in school.

And so began my love of wandering around cemeteries.

I find them soothing, calm places to be. They’re quiet, not many people visit them. And there’s plenty of wildlife in them if you’re quiet and take the time to look.

Perfect places for me to walk and explore. Even on the days when anxiety stops me going to more people-y places like towns or parks, a cemetery can offer me that quiet space I need to take a walk.

If you’d like to see some photos and read some words about my walk and the cemetery, then please visit my other blog, Curious Stops and Tea Shops.

Another snow day…

Angela PorterLeave a comment

After going into work yesterday to a crazily icy site and no heating in the block I work in, snowfall overnight has resulted in some kind of common-sense.

This means that in a little while I get to go back to sleep for a while and keep warm safely at home and not having to brave roads practically closed by snow.  The M4 is down to one lane.  Many roads are closed or passable only with extreme care.  I’ll also be keeping myself, and others, safe by not travelling along side-roads and the school-drive and ‘roads’ in school that aren’t exactly clear of snow/ice in my little Smartcar aka Deetoo (as in Smartoo-Deetoo).

I like snow as long as I can stay safe and warm inside and look out at it safely from my windows.

I do not like the sensation of slipping/sliding on snow in uncleared areas, nor do I like the fear of my car sliding into someone else’s.  I do not like the sensation of slipping and sliding as I walk or drive, carefully, on compacted snow/ice.  I do not enjoy the fear of falling over and hurting myself, which is always a distinct possibility with me as I can trip over thin air on dry, safe surfaces!  The fall always hurts.

Last time I fell over, I ended up in A&E with a very painful foot.  The foot wasn’t broken, luckily, but there was ‘soft tissue damage’ (i.e. ligaments/tendons) that took weeks to heal. Painful to walk for a couple of weeks it was, and I did not like that at all.

In Britain we are not geared up for snow.  It happens for a few days a year, if that, and that does not justify the expense of gritters/ploughs/other snow-clearing equipment.

Years ago, people lived close to where they work and it was easy to get there by shanks’ pony.  Nowadays, people live much further away from work.  Many live a distance away from public transport and would need to use private transport to get to them, if they are running.  It means that on days like today there may not be enough staff in school to look after the pupils safely.  

Years ago, health and safety law wasn’t a big issue either nor did we have the ‘if there’s blame there’s a claim’ culture that we seem mired in.

I am absolutely sure that those who shout loudest about schools being closed in this weather would be the first to lay a claim if their little darling got hurt while walking around a site that had treacherously icy surfaces or because there weren’t enough staff to supervise the pupils who had attended school.

Don’t get me wrong here, health and safety of people is very important and is always the priority for me, as a science teacher, when planning lessons for my classes.  It’s also a priority for me as I really do not like being hurt or damaged in any way, either physically, emotionally or mentally.

I do wish people would understand that the reason the school is closed is because we do not want any accidents on site, we want the pupils and staff to be safe while there and supervised properly too, and we want pupils and staff to get safely there and home again.  

The school isn’t being closed because the teachers are lazy.  We’re not lazy.  Not by a long shot.

We work hard with the pupils in our care and ‘snow days’ mean that we have to work harder to make up the lost time so that the pupils make as much progress as possible, that they are not disadvantaged when they sit their exams, exams that are needed for their future.

We spend long hours after the end of the school day and at weekends and during school holidays marking work, preparing lessons, preparing resources, writing reports, filling in progress sheets, doing extra revision lessons for pupils after the end of the school day to ensure they do well in their exams, putting up displays of work, parents evenings, meetings, concerts, fund-raising events and so many other things that people who do not know a teacher personally and are able to see how their job encroaches on their personal life are unaware that we do or think it all somehow magically gets done by itself.

I try to manage my time effectively and to achieve a work-life balance.  I remain late in school most days a week to mark/prepare work so I don’t bring it home with me, something I had to learn to do as I was a workaholic for many, many years, and I need to take care of my own mental and emotional health and well-being.

It’s not just the amount of work we do.  There are other aspects to the job we do.  We also have to deal with a lot of stuff, such as poor attitudes, bad behaviour, bullying, being aware of children who may be being abused and disclosures of abuse, as well as many other things that my not be easy to deal with.

There’s a lot of pleasure in the job, laughter and smiles with pupils through the day.  It’s all to easy to get mired in the ‘bad stuff’ and forget how much good is done.

What we are not are babysitters, childcare. We care enough about your children to close the school for their safety as well as ours.  We have a duty of care towards them.  Respect our caring about them, don’t interpret it as laziness.  Respect the fact that we follow health and safety laws and don’t ignore them, not just for the sake of the staff, but for the pupils too.

If we seem pleased about a day off, it’s simply because we know we can remain safe and well, we don’t have to face the hairy-scary journey to work, the difficult movement around the site nor the worry of if we’ll get home safely again at the end of the day.