Thursday, October 2, 2014

Doctor Who and Peter Capaldi

I don't really want to do a review or anything like that, had enough of critiquing with the OU. And I'm not a weird fan girl, in fact those fandoms usually annoy me. Women bitching about companions and how pretty the Doctor is, OK, OK I admit Matt Smith and David Tennant are pretty, but that's not what Dr Who is about.

I loved Doctor Who when Doctor Who was really not cool. At home, my fridge and my bedroom would be filled with pictures of Daleks and Tardis(es) hmm, what is the plural of Tardis? From pictures I had tried to draw to newspaper cuttings. I had toy daleks rather than the latest doll. I had a big fat pen with Doctor Who written on it that my Dad bought me, it had a chain thing and that was my sonic screwdriver for years and years. I actually got it when my Dad took me to see Jon Pertwee in Doctor Who the Musical back in the late 80s, I cried all night because we didn't meet him afterwards. I wanted to be Sarah Jane Smith and Ace (I even named my hamster Ace), I was even in the fan club! This was in the mid 80's and my seven year old self was a Doctor Who geek. It helped me later in primary school too, I remember amazing my year 6 teacher who told me I was too thick to do anything in my life by telling him that "the circumference of a circle by its diameter equals the Greek letter pi", I knew this because it's a line Tegan used to the Master in the Five Doctors.

I've watched every single episode of the 'new' Doctor Who, I loved Peter Eccleston and the energy he brought to the role and the amazing new stories being written for the show. I loved David Tennant, I didn't even mind the Rose thing too much, even though I knew it shouldn't be happening. Thanks to Deb I've even seen David Tennant live in Straford in my favourite play (Richard II), I think he is one of the best actors on the planet at the moment. I just found it sad that his Doctor started to turn into some kind of Messiah. And Matt Smith, maybe I did turn into a bit of a fan girl (tiny, tiny bit) with him, I first saw him a few years before in 'Ruby in the Smoke', I had to warch the credits to find out who that yummy bloke was. I've seen most of his t.v stuff since then. OK he was not the best Doctor, I don't blame him, he had rubbish stories and was a little  too slapstick at times, but I loved River Song.


And now we're onto the Twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi (I first saw him in Dangerous Liaisons in the late 90s when I was going through a Glenn Close is an amazing actress phase, and loving everything Sunset Boulevard). After six episodes I can already say that he, is the best Doctor of all time, despite the naff story lines he has had so far. My favourite Doctor was always Jon Pertwee, and Peter Capaldi reminds me of that Doctor, but he (Peter) is just so much better. I've noticed that there has been a lot of robots in this series of Doctor Who, I wonder if that is because of how wonderful the word 'Robot' sounds when Capaldi says it in his Scottish accent adding around five or so more r's to the word.
I loved Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker. I LOVE 'The Thick of It'. (Was also a nice surprise when Chris Addison who plays Oliver Reeder made an appearance on Doctor Who).

He can sing:


and was the lead singer in a Punk band, back in the day: 




He is great at swearing:


He looks great as a woman (dammit) he looks better than I do:

                                      

He is an incredible artist to see here and here for example, he also knows his stuff about art too:







And now, think I've babbled on enough today so, as Malcolm Tucker would say.

























Sunday, September 21, 2014

Witley Court

I am slacking at doing this blog, I feel very uninspired at the moment so not really done much lately. This week we went to Witley Court in Worcestershire, it's very peaceful and beautiful there. I didn't really take many pictures as I was just enjoying the countryside, I liked the area more than the house. I liked the way the sunlight hit the building though.


There was one little building I did fall in love with there, it looks so Romantic, I love how this photograph shows the fields in the background.


And no trip to Witley would be complete without getting a shot of the fountain.


And lastly I found a fairy tale mushroom.



So yea, I highly recommend Witley Court, it's around 45 minute drive from Birmingham, it's not vegan friendly though, so if you want to visit the tea rooms as a vegan bring your own food and milk as they have nothing. 

Monday, September 15, 2014

Some Drawings and Paintings and Books.

Finally got round to taking those pictures of my pictures.

Excuse the 'curling' I've not got frames for them yet and guess it just happens with painting huh? Anyway, this is one I made for Wib's room he loves yellow and I thought the symbols suit him, altohugh I think I got wisdom a little bit wrong, the two boxes should be under the sticky out bit, grr.

Acrylic and Felt Tip

This next one I have made for my Bedroom, May paints are running really low and I'm almost out of all the colours so I tried to use up bits. I may make this one again when I get some more paints as the orange bit and dark green seemed a really good idea at the time but I'm not so sure now. This is my hippy sun.

Acrylics

I had to go to the library today to take some books back, but ended up bringing a load home with me and as the Co-Op is just over the road I had to go in to get some vegan doughnuts.... mmm Custard vegan doughnuts, sweet awesomeness with custard treasure, oooh with coffee and dunking and.....sorry I digress. Where was I? Yes, I got a loads of cool looking books out (and doughnuts) and I will try to do a drawing a day.

The Books I took Out

Hey, no such thing as reading too many vegan cookery books. the rest are all art, they had crafting ones too, but I think seven books is enough for now. I started on the Fantasy Art book right away, I've not even got to the instructional bits yet and felt a bit of creativity come over me, so here is my charcoal wizard. He doesn't look very happy but I'm kinda pleased with him.

Charcoal and pencil

I've never really drawn people before in my life, except piss take pictures on the guild website so this is my first real attempt, and boy how hard are eyes and noses to draw?

I'm going to Merry Hill tomorrow and will hopefully get some more acrylics AND finally get some glass paints, can't wait to try glass painting, I've been saving up coffee and jam jars to practice with.

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Bit of a Break.

It has been a over a week since my last post, I've been suffering from 'man-flu' which has now turned into a chest infection, so I've been feeling like death. The five a day challenge is on hold and now Wib has picked up my bug too *sigh*.

I have however been up to stuff. Last week was non league football day and we went to see Halesowen Town play Workington. It was a really good match, Workington were quite a dirty team though and we (Halesowen) lost 1-0. It was a great day out (despite losing my voice through man-flu and feeling urrghh) and I'll defiantly be going again.


I spent the rest of the week sleeping mostly and making nice homemade soups, but Wednesday I went to Edgebaston to see The Bears play Northampton. What an amazing day out. Saw Trott and Hain get a century each, had a look around the museum  and generally relaxed for hours and hours of wonderful cricket in the sunshine. I got some nice pictures of Trott and I'm gutted in a way that he has not made the England team but that has to be good news for the Bears as he is immense.




I have also been doing some painting I'd post them but I have no idea where Wib has put them, so I'll post them later when he gets back from the shop. But I think I've flooded this blog post with pictures already.





Friday, September 5, 2014

5 A Day- Stourbridge

For today's 5 a weekday challenge Wib and I went to Stourbridge. The town with no sign posts, at all. The pedometer recorded just under 7 miles so we smashed the challenge yet again.



We went to the Glass Quarter today via the canal towpath, it was rather beautiful and quiet along the canal, I recommend it for a nice walk out, saw some beautiful dogs too.



We went to Stourbridge to visit the Ruskin Glass Centre I wanted to visit the Red House Glass Cone too, but Wib took so long getting ready we just didn't have time, sadly we missed a lot of the shops at the Ruskin too as it was late when we arrived. They do however have a cafe which serves locally sourced orgainc food, they also do vegan! However I brought some pasta and pesto with leek and mushroom I made in the morning as I'm used to not being able to eat out any more.


So with most of the studios closed, we didn't get the full experience but we did see an awesome guy who engraved and embossed bottles and glasses. You take in a bottle of champagne or a bottle of J.D or Beer or whatever and he would write on it and draw stuff on it, it was so cool, he was working on a wedding bottle when we went in. I wish I had the courage to ask him if me would mind me taking some pictures but I didn't feel it was appropriate. We also saw a guy blowing and molding glass with his hands, in was very hot in that room but what am amazing skill I would LOVE to learn how to do that.  We saw a woman painting an enamel bowl thing which was so intricate and beautiful. But my favourite studio there was Kairos Sculpture http://www.kairos-sculpture.com/  check out his website and go visit, such an interesting guy who is really passionate about stone carving and is also really knowledgeable about the stone he uses and it's source and very interesting. You can see on his website many of the sculptures we saw today.

All in all we had a really lovely time today, and I can't wait until my next trip to Stourbridge. Tomorrow is non league day supporting grass roots football so Wib and I will be doing our bit and going to see Halesowen Town play for the first time.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

The Hels 5 A (week)Day Challenge and the Zoo

Without the Spoon Challenge and stuff, I've not really had anything to post. Unlike a Certain Gwen I suck at finding stuff like that. So I'm making my own challenge. The 5 a (weekday) challenge. That is, I am going to try to walk at least five miles every weekday (because there are too many people about on weekends and people freak me out).

Today Wib and I walked 7 and a half miles around Dudley Zoo and had an awesome picnic of Hummus and Sweet Potato Pakora.

 Sadly I didn't get any pictures of Daseep today but I got one I'm really happy with of Benji the orangutan.


And for the first time in almost a year we saw Inca the bear actually awake!




Not sure where we are going on our adventures tomorrow, but I'll add a photo and stuff when I get home. 

Friday, August 29, 2014

SpoonChallenge and 1500

The Spoon Challenge prompt today (well yesterday but..'Merica time zones ooks it up) was 'landmarks'. So I've drawn some I've seen and some I want to see.

2B Pencil

Had to edit the picture a bit as some of the drawing was too faint.

Did some PvP on my Paladin Daseep last night, had a blast and finally hit 1500 rating, well for one game at least. Have to say a big thanks to Efteling for carrying me that far haha, also Nerf Russian Monks!

Off to make some nice sweet potato curry for tomorrow's dinner now, will include a recipe and pictures if it turns out well.

Also, if you haven't tried it yet you NEED some Lotus Caramelised Spread £2.29 in Tesco and Vegan. Trust me, you want to try this.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

My Dream Map

Today's, well last night's actually Spoon Challenge Prompt was Map Legend. I found this one quite hard to grasp. My favourite maps are from Tolkien, Dragonlance, The Belgariad and a Game of Thrones. So I've bent the rules a bit here, although I will draw a map of my own making some other time with a 'legend' as they call it, which I think is the same as a key. I wanted to draw the most amazing beautiful map there is. So here is my dream map.

Water colour pencils and felt tip pens

You may have to click the image to see what I've done here (haha). My dream map is Earth, I actually got quite emotional doing this one. Let me tell you why Earth. This planet is beautiful, there are so many places and things I want to see, the Northern Light's in Norway, Mount. Fuji, Thailand, Botswana, India, The Pyramids, China, the Lake and Peak Districts in England, Ireland, New York, Peru, oh so many amazing places I need to see. In my dreams however, the Earth is one, one big country with no war, no religion, were people do not go hungry and children are loved and animals are free. The only symbols needed on my map are peace and love. So I leave today's post with the words of the wonderful John Lennon:

Imagine there is no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky

Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You, you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will live as 
one


Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Spoon Challenge, Arenas and PvP Woes

Today's Spoon Challenge prompt is Taxi, I spent ages doing a picture and went to take a photo of it and the damn thing fell behind the fire  because at 5am I took the picture out of the book and my brain wasn't working. Wib was not impressed.

Well, today's picture looks like yesterday's one, it's not the same one though. I just couldn't go through trying to re-do the lost drawing. So here is my taxi.

Charcoal & Coloured Pencil

After an entire day of losing battlegrounds the mighty Efteling logs on and takes my newly dinged warrior into the arena where we met the God of rogues, damn that guy was good, we managed to win one though, well, Efteling did and I replaced my green trinket with a 550ilvl one. Can't wait to do more than be a stun bot.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Spoon Challenge - Skyline.

After trying for hours upon hours trying to draw a skyline with rulers and many colours and funky buildings and hating it, I just gave up and went back to my trusted charcoal and drew some blocks, and actually, I kinda like it. It took about two minutes to complete. Hehehe 

So here it is, my Skyline with purple stars.


Warcraft, Arches and Books.

So, I spent the weekend playing WoW, yay to having WoW back again. And I've got my Orc warrior to 90 after a GM had to bring her back from the Nether. And she's been doing some PvP....badly. Newly dinged PvP is painful and soul destroying and to make it worse we hardly ever win and play mostly against Russians! You can see from my WoW Armoury just how painful. Unlike Defias Brotherhood where I've been doing most of my PvP, Dragonblight is a dead/dying server, so I'm guildless and maybe in the worst horde battlegroup there is. But, it's a challenge.

With no Spoonflower prompt again today *sadface* I decided to take some inspiration from my new book on fantasy architecture, so here is my take on a Byzantinian keyhole arch.


Excuse the squiggle in the middle that was me attempting and failing to make it look like there was something through the arch. And I'm not trying to be pretentious in explaining the drawing now, it's just I put a lot of thought into it and would like to share my arch, which I know is not a good drawing but hopefully you'll see what I was trying to do.  Although Eastern in design I wanted to give the arch a Celtic and Pagan look. So I added a figure of eight pattern to surround the arch, I was going to do triquetras but that is beyond my capabilities, anyway, I added the three moon phases and stars near the top, which you can see better in the next photograph. The circle part of the arch is being held by a crude Earth Mother figure, although usually she has the Earth in her stomach or womb, I didn't think it would work so well with this arch.


So um, yea, that's what I've been up to today.

I've also finished reading all of the Belgariad books and the spin offs. I'm kind of gutted as I've come to love Polgara and Belgarath, but I'm sticking to David Eddings for now and I'm reading the Elenium series, so far so good, but I'm already missing Polgara.
   

Friday, August 22, 2014

Fish and Clouds and Warcraft

Bit of a quick one tonight as it's late.

Today's Spoon Challenge is Fish So I decided to try and draw some koi, I love watching them in the monkey house at Dudley Zoo so I looked online for some pictures. Anyway, here is my attempt, I'm not very happy with it but it's done now at least.

Charcoal and watercolour pencil (unwatercoloured)

I saw an awesome cloud earlier and tried to take a picture of it, again I didn't do very well, I need to learn how to change the lighting and stuff on my camera. Anyway I hope you can see the amazing colours I was TRYING to get.

Taken on Canon PowerShot SX50 HS

And lastly, I managed to talk Wibby into giving me a month on WoW, so I've been messing about on some of my lowbie characters. I love my baby dwarf warrior. A Dutch pal and I went through a phase of  testing out the PvP on different servers, but I think Lilburn the Dwarf might stick, it's quite nice seeing Defias Brotherhood from the alliance side too. 



Thursday, August 21, 2014

Spoon Challenge- Cats

I may do another cat picture tomorrow, I want to do something with colours too. But it depends on how Wibby is doing really. Seems he is getting worse, I suck at looking after him too though, I've known him since 1999 and never seen him poorly before.

Anyway, here is my picture. I really enjoyed using the charcoal for the first time

Charcoal and watercolour pencil

Photo taken by me 17/03/14

Daseep is a Sumatran tiger at Dudley Zoo, and was recently the poster child for Global Tiger Day, I am also one of her adopters. Although my charcoal drawing doesn't really look like her, (I just do not have the skill to copy her markings although I did try) she was my inspiration for this drawing. The 'squiggle' next to the eye is Chinese for tiger.

I adore tigers, I am tiger crazy, with the small Sumatrans like Daseep here my favourite. But they are so rare now, with poachers and the destruction of their habitats (this is why we stay away from palm oil kids) in as little as 20 years there may not be ANY tigers left. I will write a piece on this soon, but for now I urge you to read this website http://www.21stcenturytiger.org/ for more information on tigers and what this wonderful charity are doing to try and ensure they do not become extinct. 

What Hungry Fat Vegans Eat and Over Spending in W.H. Smiths

Had the best brunch ever today, I really should not go shopping when I'm hungry. I can't usually have breakfasts in cafes or pubs as the 'vegetarian' option usually includes Quorn 'meat' and butter. Quorn is not vegan (booo) so I went to Asda and got some lovely Linda McCartney red onion and rosemary sausages some hash browns and some mushrooms. Happy days.

LM Sausages £2, Mushrooms 99p, Hash Browns £1 ASDA

I couldn't finish it, and my usual food hoover is still unwell, so I'll re-heat it tomorrow and have it again.

I spent too much money in W.H. Smith, which was the whole point of my trip to Halesowen today, back to school sales are win. I spent far too long on the self service 'express till' (express my arse) and managed to scan one of my books two times, which meant I had to go back to the shop five minutes later when I noticed the receipt. Luckily the guy in there was really nice and I got my money back for the books I didn't have. Anyway, here is what I got, because ya know, I like taking photos.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Spoon Challenge Beetles!

Urrgghhh I HATE bugs, beetles and insects so I Hels'd up today's drawing. I tried really hard on this yet it still looks like it's done by a five year old. *sigh* I really do want to get better at this. If I'm feeling fully fighting fit tomorrow's Spoon Challenge will be done in acrylics.

So here it is, Beetles my way.

Dinner Super Comforting Stew.

So, I'm not really one for taking pictures of food and I see how I suck at taking food pictures! But I'm really pleased with how my super comfort stew turned out. Wibby and I have been a bit under the weather the last few days and I finally have my appetite back, although Rob hasn't yet (yay more stew for me!).
So I will share my recipe (although it was just stuff that needed using up) and show you what mine looked like. If you decide to make it (I highly recommend it) just add or take stuff out to suit your taste, it's all about healthy comfort food.

Super Vegan Stew Hels Style
Ingredients:
1 Sweet Potato, diced
1 onion, chopped 
1 carrot, thinly sliced 
1 leek, thinly sliced
1 stick of celery, thinly sliced
1 parsnip, chopped
1 red or yellow pepper, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
A tin of Chickpeas
A small tin of chopped tomatoes
A good handful of spinach
120g (ish, or a suitable portion) of quinoa
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp ginger
2 tsp English mustard
Boiling water
Vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:
1,  Lightly fry the onion and leek in a drop of olive oil until translucent.
2, Add the carrot, sweet potato, celery, pepper and parsnip and allow to soften (around 10 mins)
3, Add the garlic, cumin, ginger and mustard and stir.
4. Add the chickpeas, tin of tomatoes and stir into the mixture (it will start smelling awesome at this point). Cover the stew in boiling water/veg stock so it just covers all the vegetable and allow to simmer for 30-45 mins. Add the spinach 2-3 minutes before serving
5, Add the quinoa to a pint of boiling vegetable stock, simmer until the water has gone (around 15 mins)
6, Put some of the Quinoa into the stew and use the rest as a side dish.
7, Enjoy :)

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Another Hedgehog.

So I've made a new tap dancing Hedgehog because the other one needed a top hat and some stage lighting soooo, here is the 'revised version' because someone liked this better than the one that took me hours to draw.


My second Spoon Challenge

So today's spoon challenge is to do a hedgehog. I thought I'd try my watercolour pencils again without much success. So to keep it short and sweet, here is my attempt at a hedgehog and a cartoon hedgehog.

Making A Mess

So my new curtains are up, they're a lot wider than I need so I need some tie backs for them. However getting my  room the way I want it is starting to get really expensive, so I decided to make some tie backs out of hemp, paper/card some beads and good ole mod podge. I'm really pleased with how they came out.


I mixed up some of my acrylic paints to get the colours I wanted and painted some thick paper, hooped one end of the hemp string and rolled the paper around the string. I separated the paper and beads by doing a simple knot and ended with another loop at the other end. Now I just need some hoops from B&Q tomorrow. I'm also waiting on amazon to send my purple and pink hemp out so I can make the rest in other colours.

Monday, August 18, 2014

The Spoon Challenge

So last night after a chat with Deb I learned about the spoon challenge SpoonChallenge A Month Of Drawing what a cool idea! What better way to learn to draw stuff than by being sent a daily challenge? After a trip to Halesowen I got some of those watercolour pencils, I actually went for some new brushes for my acrylics but the pencils were half price and seemed cool, I always liked colouring in as a kid. Sadly I've missed quite a few days of the challenge, but no time like the present to get started. Today's challenge was to draw a platypus. I wanted to make mine a tribal hippy platypus, but I've not found a way to layer colours with these pencils, if they can actually be layered. Wow I have so much to learn.

Anyway here's my hippy but not tribal attempt at drawing a platypus in an orange sea, I wanted to make a kind of tie dye effect with pinks and purples and green on it's body but just couldn't figure it out.


So, a Blog huh?

Well, about time I got a hobby.

I've always wanted to be one of those people that can just make stuff. However, I can't knit, I can't sew, I can't draw, and until a few days ago I'd never done painting. I've always wanted to be good at crafting, but I'm just not. But I am hoping I can learn.

I got some cheap acrylic paints from Wilko http://www.wilko.com/reeves-acrylic-tube-set-12pk/invt/0331498, some brushes from the 99p shop and I ended up making this:


A3, acrylic on canvas in really bad light by a crap photographer. 

While it's no masterpiece and I still feel it's missing something, and some bits look really stupid, it's the first thing I've ever painted so I'll give myself a little pat on the back.

So the purpose of this blog, my life is changing, for the better (much better) and I want to learn about crafting and art, photography and good healthy vegan cooking and so much more. And although, no one is going to read or see this blog it's just a little bit of the web where I can stick my random mutterings and pictures and one day see if I have progressed at all. Who knows maybe I'll get good at something.