New Stuff, Old Stuff and Geese.

Cadi; chinagraph & watercolour pencils.

I passed my maths exam! Thank goodness for that, as this means the final section of my NVQ Level 3 course is now complete, and all I have to do now is wait for my certificates to arrive.

I'm glad to see the end of it, as the course took up far more time than was described at the outset - the better part of two years, in fact - and involved a disproportionate amount of writing for a course which was supposed to be largely vocational.

Anyway, thanks go to Knowsley Community College tutors Helen Lea-Smith and Paul Byatt, who guided me through the course.

That's enough courses, thank you. I've done one job-related course after another for the last five years, including a previous NVQ Level 3. Enough is enough.

Rapid ink sketch of Canada geese.

If you're in Birkenhead Park and see a woman trying to sketch whilst holding onto two Jack Russells who're itching to walk further on, that'll probably be me. I've been gradually filling a pocket-sized sketchpad with super-rapid ink drawings of ducks and geese. Birds don't stand still unless they're asleep, and even then they seem to keep one eye open.

Geese grooming; 10B pencil.

My sketches aim to capture the birds' movements rather than much detail. If I'd wanted accurate details, I'd have taken photos. I usually use an ordinary ink pen designed for drawing, but here's one sketch where I used a 10B pencil instead.

These geese were sitting on the lake's shore, grooming their feathers in the sunshine. They'll be getting ready to fly off to their warmer winter sites in South America soon. Quite a number seem to stay all year round, however.

I've also been sketching a few of the park's old trees, the gnarlier the better. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with all these sketches yet, beyond making a video slide-show of them at some point.

I bought some new clothes! Having rummaged through favourite but increasingly derelict woollens whose once-pristine forms had slowly devolved into shapes more suited to some uncertain species of simian humanoid, I figured it was time for a wardrobe update.

Now, usually, if I go shopping with the intent to buy clothes I come back home with absolutely nothing. Last Saturday I arrived home with an armful of new outfits, including some lovely autumn/winter woollens. Now I need more clothes hangers.

Eagle-eyed visitors to this website will notice some new pages in the menu bar at the top of the screen. I've added pages for my art and cryonics, and also 'free stuff' which lists links to some of my Hubpage articles on writing and philosophy, plus some poetry and fiction. More links will be added to these pages in due course. Meanwhile, feel free to explore.

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A Cure for Aging?

"All that we profess to do is but this, - to find out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effort of time. This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood. In our order we hold most noble -, first, that knowledge which elevates the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body. But the mere art (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret which I will only hint to thee at present, by which heat or calorific, as ye call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle of life, can be made its perpectual renovator...." Zanoni, book IV, chapter II, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first published in 1842. Oroboros keyring - Spooky Cute Designs The idea of being able to achieve an immortal life is probably as old as human life itself. Folklore and myt...

Remembering Richie Tattoo Artist's Studio

Richard in the street entrance to his tattoo studio in Liverpool. The vertical sign next to Richard is now in the Liverpool Tattoo Museum. Yesterday, my sister Evelyn, Richard and myself stood outside Richard's old tattoo studio and looked up at the few remaining signs, whose paint has now mostly flacked away to reveal bare wood. On the studio's window are stick-on letters which read, "Art", where once it boldly announced his presence as the city's only "Tattoo Artist". I can remember him buying that simple plastic lettering from an old-fashioned printer's shop. This was in 1993, not long after he'd opened the studio and before he could afford better signs. After he'd patiently stuck them onto the glass we realised that from the outside the sign read "Artist Tattoo", so we had to carefully peel the letters off the window and have another go, laughing over having made such an obvious error yet worried in case we spoiled the letteri...

Falling Trees and Blue Portraits

Birkenhead Park Visitor Centre, 7th April 2019, by Adele Cosgrove-Bray. My ongoing series of sketches in the park continues unabated, as is evident. On a few recent sketches I've added some simple washes of watercolour to bring another dimension to the scenes. I've long grown accustomed to sketching in public, and the few people who've passed any comment have always been encouraging. I've even unintentionally captured a tiny bit of park history:- I drew this lovely arching tree in February this year, and since then its own weight has pulled its roots out from the ground. Probably due to safety concerns, it has been brutally cut back so it's now little more than a stump, and the horizontal section, with all its vertical branches, has been removed. Hopefully the tree will survive this harsh treatment. "How can walkies please, when every step's a wheeze?" by Adele Cosgrove-Bray. Portrait by Adele Cosgrove-Bray; chalk and charcoal...

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