annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
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Macca agai
The art workshop this weekend was both brilliant and exhausting. Yesterday I didn't quite manage to stay to the end - I keeled over at 1.30 and just had to go home where I fell into bed, Bloke brought me an espresso coffee and I slept for two hours. Today I made it all through. So, it was about techniques I'd not done before like Gelli plate mono-printing, which is basically rolling acrylic paint onto a squidgy plate, laying a leaf on top and pressing paper down on top. We did lots of stuff with tissue paper, layering and negative space and I put some words under mine.
It's a long thin canvas as the teacher is hacked off with always the same proportions, A4 etc. It's one of the few pieces I've done where I think the original is better than the photo, in this case because the colours are really more vibrant than they appear.
I feel really inspired by it and want to use this technique alongside some painting on that big canvas I bought (last time I got inspired by a workshop!) based on my garden but not straightforwardly representative. There are lots of good leaves to use. So I've ordered a gelli plate and a roller and will report back. The teacher gave us all a set of anilinky brilliant water colours which are just lush - we used them to paint white tissue paper which we then used to print and lay as background and whatever.
Mental health wise I think I did well. This is the first non-mental-health related art workshop I've done for ages (I think, though I could be wrong, memory etc). The last one I remember I had to leave as my head exploded with all the information we were given and I couldn't stop crying for hours. Yesterday was quite heavy information-wise but I did breathing and reminding myself that I could leave, though I knew I didn't want to as I really like this teacher's art. Today I felt more anxious after not having made it all through yesterday and found myself working miles too fast, just slapping everything down on the canvas without allowing myself much time for thought. Sigh. The other women (all women, often is on art and writing things) were great. I ended up telling the one I shared a able with about Sammie as I'd wanted my piece to be kind of sea related, with that Sea Fever's words lurking underneath. She was cool and asked me lots of questions about Sam and I told her and cried a bit and she told me about her dad who died around the same time as Sam and we all survived.
Now I'm watching Paul McCartney's Glasto set on BBC iplayer and liking it much more than I did when I was there, all grumpy and unknowingly Coviddy. He did better than Mick Jagger when the Stones played a few years ago - he kept sloping off stage, but Macca's there for hours - though to be fair he doesn't dance like Jagger.
Hmm, that made me think he might have been sloping off for a little stimulant, which reminded me that I forgot to take my peipe and grass to Glasto, which pissed me off. But then I bought a small lump of pot and all was well. I could easily buy a pipe at Glasto. Except I couldn't. None of the fucking stalls were selling pipes, none of the fuckers. I wasn't going to smoke baccy, so I didn't share any of the many joints that were around. We tried to bodge a little pipe out of tin foil but couldn't get it to work. I wasn't going to eat a lump of something I hadn't even smoked to know how strong it was - I'm too old for that malarkey. A woman in her late 60s, completely fucked up, spaced out, fighting the good fight against having a proper mental episode, for hours on end, is not on anyone's festival wish-list, especially not on mine. So it's been in my purse all this time - I've been moving it aside as I rummage about for my debit card - and I just rembered it so have had a little go on my pipe, sitting where I left it, with a little bag of grass, far too visible really, but there you go, we all survived. Paul's singing Something now, accompanying himself on the ukelele, lush. Pictures of George on the big screen. I couldn't see that at the time as I was sitting down and could only see people's arses. It's gone big, the song now and I remember singing along and it's fucking magic. I was on my own though. I can't even remember why.
Now he's playing bloody Obla di obla da, which was a regular in that singing group and it always got on my nerves then and it does now - for fuck sake, mate you've got some blinding fucking songs, why play this??
Get Back now, they've noticabley put the audience singing along much further back in the mix than they often do. Everyone was singing this, loudly but you can barely hear us - ooh, it's exciting to think that I was there, singing along with Paul.
Although to be fair, I'm more excited now than I was then, despite the benefit of the coat I made,
Right, I'm off now, I keep panicking that I'm going to accidentally delete this before I post it and Dave Grohl's up now. Laters xx
12:32 a.m. - 11.07.22
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