It’s a loud creak from me in 2026… I lasted 5 months on my blogs last year. That’s better than the huge hiatus I had previously, where I was buried underground for a few years..just lurking🤐. I’ve spent more time junk journalling, on Instagram and generally having a good time, getting out and about🐝 and who can blame me ..at my age🙂
A Winter Warmer in Hebden Bridge
A pre Christmas Galavant
So, new year, – new start. I still don’t know in which direction I want both my blogs to go in. I’m still writing poetry and prose. I haven’t reviewed any books or films for a while. I wouldn’t mind getting back into this.
So make the most of it!
But this blog, Echostains.. this has changed beyond recognition since I started it all those years ago in Uni. Art, design and creativity are still my main interests. I still manage to get some into my life every single day in some way or other.
I also started a personal journey journal which I write up every day. This has helped me a lot on my own pathway and life adventure. I feel that these pursuits and interests could all feed into my blogs. It’s just a case of harnessing em and getting em in proportion really. I’m not really sure it would work. Just a thought. Hopefully followed by action.
I’m always trying to make more room on my phone. So I go through it and delete swathes of stuff (that sooner or later I will be looking for..🙄). The other night I binned loads pics others had taken and lots of hideous selfies that kinda went wrong 😳😄 I hate posing for photos. I nearly always blink anyway. I’ve written a poem about the posing for photos ordeal🙂…the big nose is just a poetic license…… 🤥😆
Well the sky isn’t overcast here but it’s very cloudy. Only last week, it was a Simpson sky. You know the type of sky? Bright blue with fluffy well defined clouds. We all used to draw these in school. Like chunks or balls of cotton wool. It always looks idyllic and happy. If skies could smile that’s what they’d look like ☺️
Sunny skies, blue skies, cloudy skies, stormy skies, – lots of moody whimsical skies. Here’s an unusual sky. It’s known as a ‘Mackerel’ sky. The term Mackerel sky comes the way cirrocumulus or sometimes called altocumulus clouds can be likened to a ripple effect which resembles the scales of the Mackeral fish. This term was used in a piem
“Mackerel sky, Mackerel sky. Never long wet and never long dry” is a weather phrase for this sort of sky. Also, “A dappled sky, like a painted woman, soon changes her face”.
Sailing to Byzantium by WB yeats
The great poet William Butler Years mentions the Mackerel sky in his poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium‘, 1926. It is a reflective poem about old age. It is one of my favourites of his.
“That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect”.
Another sky fan was artist JWM Turner B. 1775-1851 London. He just loved dramatic skies. His paintings are indeed famous for this. His skies are referred to as his ‘skies sketchbook’. His greatest interest was painting the weather and the effect of the light – especially on the water. When asked which was his favourite sky in Europe, he named the Isle of Thanet, Kent. He spent a lot of his childhood there and had lovely memories of the place as a young boy..
Turner loved the sea so much that he often took to the water in a boat to get inspiration, deas and to sketch. When painting ‘Snowstorm‘ he reported that he had himself tied to the mast so that he could better observe the wild chaotic elements😮 Now that’s real dedication😎
This poem is one I wrote years ago, the 90’s I think. I’ve just come across it. It’s from a collection of poems I laughingly call my ‘Killjoy’ collection🙂😉 I don’t really hate the sun of course☺️ it’s more the other way round. The sun isn’t keen on me really. It used to annoy me that I couldn’t get a tan. I’ve tried fake tan on my face 😂🙄 – I look ridiculous. I’ve come to the conclusion that I just do not suit suntan. I’ve learned to live with it. Apparently, there are real sun haters. They are called Heliophobes. They all have their reasons. To each his own. I am not one though. I enjoy looking at sunshine lighting up everything it touches and that gorgeous blue sky. Long may I remain doing so🤞😎
Some people tend gardens. Weeding out weeds. Sorting the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. This blog has been online since 2008 and it’s a neverending task to update and in some cases revise it. Lots of new information, some broken links. I edit as I come across these.
But here’s one worth a Reblog I think. When I first wrote about this artist he wasn’t as famous as he is now. Willard Wigan b. Wolverhampdon,UK, has become the World wide name in the art of Micro sculpture.
Peter Pan by Willard Wigan
By the term ‘Micro sculpture’ I mean sculpture that is so minute, that some of it can only be viewed by microscope.
The Artist’s tiny sculptures, like the ones done in the eye if a needle or on the head of a pin, are absolutely amazing! Some can’t even be seen with the naked eye.
Willard Wigan
Wigan paints his sculptures with the hair of a dead fly – and he has also used his own eyelash😮. What patience and a steady hand he has. He has to out himself into a meditative state in order to sculpt these tiny works of art. He works between pulse beats to avoid tremors.
Wigan struggled at school and diverted himself by making tiny sculptures.
“It began when I was five years old,” says Willard. “I started making houses for ants because I thought they needed somewhere to live. Then I made them shoes and hats. It was a fantasy world I escaped to where my dyslexia didn’t hold me back and my teachers couldn’t criticise me. That’s how my career as a micro-sculptor began.”
Ship on a pinhead
Wigan’s art has been referred as ‘the eighth wonder of the world as it’s incomparable.
Statue of Liberty Willard Wigan
Wigan was awarded an MBE in July 2007. He is recognised in The Guinness World Records as the creator of the smallest hand-made sculpture in the world (2017). The sculpture depicted a human foetus measuring 00,78 by 0,053 millimetres, This record beats his previous record for his 24-carat gold motorbike that was embedded into a human hair.
The artist has appeared as a judge in The Great Big Tiny Design 2022 and Sandy Toxvig’s ‘Tiny Christmas ‘Challenge 2022 and World’s Tiniest Masterpieces (film) 2018
This short video shows Wigan’s tribute to the then President Obama.
Alphabetical Random Artists. The aim is to feature the best one (in my opinion) for each letter of the alphabet. This is not only to expand my knowledge – but to get me back into blogging more regularly.
My method will be to choose alphabetically 3 or 4 that look interesting at random, look at them all and pick the one that inspires or intrigues me the most, but ALL opinions count.
The three that I have chosen today (alphabetically) are singularly different from each other. Do you have any preferences?
Thomas Aquinas Daly B. 1937 New York, USA is a landscape and still life artist. He was a printer before he turned to full time painting in 1981. Daly was awarded the Red Smith award from The National Museum of Wildlife Art in 2021. Working in watercolour and oils, his work concentrates on Nature and Landscape. Daly has also written books, including – The Painting Season and Painting Nature’s Quiet Place.
Alison Debenham British artist B.1903-1967 London UK. Portraitist, Slade School of Art, London. Her parents were Sir Ernest Ridley Debenham 1st Baronet and his wife Cecily (of the department store). Debenham painted friends, family and workers in her parents estate. A short biography of her life here
Alice Debenham, Farm Manager 1914-1919 by Alison Debenham
Dutch Harbour 1915/15. ValériaDénes image here note: This is a Misinterpreted work. Read what has been discovered about it here
Valéria Dénes, Cubist artist b. Hungary 1877-1915 was one of the first Hungarian Cuban artists. Dénes joined the artists group Keve and then the artists colony Nagybánya in 1907. In Paris 1910 she became a pupil of Henri Matisse. She married the artist Sándor Galimberti in 1912. They shared the same oeuvre and exhibited together. They were on the threshold of success internationally when disaster struck. The story of their art and very interesting life can be found here
Yet again I find that I have some previous posts featuring this great artist. So, waste not want not 🙂
Meanwhile, over on my Bookstains blog, it’s the birthday of Edward Lear, poet, artist illustrator and the inventor of the Limerick. Hope you enjoy both these posts🙂 I’ve added my own Limerick to the Lear post too🙂 Here’s the link
Today is the birthday of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (b. London 1828- d. 1882). His real name was Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti but he preferred the former adaptation.
Rossetti was the son of an Italian Scholar called Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe and member of an Italian noble family. His mother was Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori, born in London to an Italian exile Gaetanno. His sister was the poetess Christina Rossetti.
Rossetti attended Kings College School and then went on to study at Henry Sass’s Drawing Academy 1841-1845. He enrolled in the Royal Academy, left in 1848 and studied under the tutorage of Ford Maddox Brown.
In 1848, along with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, Rossetti founded the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a poet, illustrator and painter and later became an inspiration for William Morris and Edward Burns Jones. The Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood’s intention was to reform British Art by returning to the formal training techniques and regimes introduced by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Detail, complex compositions in bright colours were to be key elements. Perhaps their biggest champion was the Art critic John Ruskin:
Every Pre-Raphaelite landscape background is painted to the last touch, in the open air, from the thing itself. Every Pre-Raphaelite figure, however studied in expression, is a true portrait of some living person.[10]
John Ruskin.
The early Pre-Raphaelite paintings show the realist qualities of the movement, for example, Rossetti’s ‘Girlhood of Mary Virgin’ (1849) and Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850) which portrayed Mary as a young girl. William Bell Scott saw the Girlhood painting in progress and observed Rossetti’s technique:
He was painting in oils with water-colour brushes, as thinly as in water-colour, on canvas which he had primed with white till the surface was a smooth as cardboard, and every tint remained transparent. I saw at once that he was not an orthodox boy, but acting purely from the aesthetic motive. The mixture of genius and dilettantism of both men shut me up for the moment, and whetted my curiosity.[13]
Today is the great Surrealist artist’s Birthday. Born 1904-1989, Figures, Spain. To give him his complete title – Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali I Domenech, Marquess of Dali of Publo. Even his name is flamboyant. The story of Dali and his overwhelming contribution to the Surrealist movement has been written about so much. His works speaks for itself (much better when in his own voice🙂)
Not only was Dali a fascinating artist, he was himself a multi faceted, unique flamboyant and complicated individual – a true eccentric character.
Dali had some unusual pets. Here he is with one of his favourite pets, an anteater. Dali was fascinated by their tongues 🙂 He certainly knows how to make a grand entrance..,.
Here’s Dali with another one of his favourite pets, an ocelot named Babou. Dali loves cats, especially wild ones.
I have written several posts about Dali and his work (links below)
Echostains Blog 
