Official!

Well hello there!

Hope this edition finds you all in the best of health, fighting fit, mentally alert and raring to go! Oh it's a Friday for goodness sakes. Everyone in the known Universe is always up and buzzing on a Friday; the weekend and all that. And so should YOU be. Get on with it - smile - NOW!

Yep - it's official - my elbow is broken, so it's only another 5 weeks to go and I will be just like you all; well, sort of. That's all the bad news for now I reckon, except the weather which no-one has control over [bit like me and my body really], but I can't think of anything else that readily springs to mind, so that must be good.

My real painting is obviously curtailed for now. It was pencilled [no pun intended] in as a possibility last week, but now I find myself confined to running ideas through my head and trying out some practice sessions in my little home studio/office. You would think it's fairly easy to work with just one hand, after all, how many brushes etc can you use at the same time. It's weird though - taking tops off paints [I couldn't open my inks last week], holding stuff, mounting papers etc onto the easel to work on, using and tearing masking tape or simply trying to balance and support yourself whilst working. Oh enough of that!

My watercolours have been given some hammer, now the problem of transferring water to my desk without spilling any on the laminate flooring, thereby enabling me to slip and possibly do myself an injury [another - haven't you got enough already - how many do you want] has been successfully overcome.

There is a slight chance that with a lot of luck and plenty of perseverance on my part, that I may just be developing a bit of a style of my own. Yeah - thought that would shock you all - make you splutter on your cereals and all that.

As a standby I am also doing reasonably well with one of my newer bestest friends, the gouaches. Although we have only known each other for a couple of weeks now, I feel we are getting along famously. Those who have seen stuff on my website will be aware that I like doing cartoon type drawings, as I call then; oh you know, things done with black lines round them all - whatever the subject. My iris have been given a work out using these on a smaller scale, and the poppies are in for the same treatment soon - but please don't let on to them. I don't want them to start putting themselves into a forced "wilt" just to spite me.

Last night we were at a party for a friend's birthday, I saw on his walls classic railway posters from the "Golden Era" of rail travel. The same style I was working but minus the black outlines. Now I have never seen these, and I was sort of taken aback. I wasn't sure if I was pleased things like these were popular, or that what I was working on had already been covered. The only outcome was that they looked good and somebody else liked them too. Best develop some more ideas for subjects then!

Whatever you use, please, enjoy your art.

Paul

Given the "Elbow"

Welcome to a dull, cloudy and quite breezy part of England, but at least the sun will be shining on other parts of the world. Messrs Brown and the Cabinet have probably had to repay their claims for sunshine and their receipts returned for such. Hence a dull day!

Oooohh - Paul - being sarcastic - controversial. Stop it!

So, hmmmm, er, not a lot to report apart from I have a suspected broken elbow after falling on Monday. That, may curtail my artistic temperament somewhat. If it's not broken, which is hopefully the case, then I may be forced into doing simple sketches and matchstick figures.

Hey, come to think of it, Picasso didn't do too badly out of it! Neither did Lowrey! Hey - I could be famous! Yeah, and the Government innocent of money laundering; right!

Ooops - there I go again!

That means of course that my pastels are sat getting dusty; my acrylics have "welded" their tubes shut; my watercolours all but dried up, and my "dipping" ink pens have picked up their towels and gone in!

You may be interested to know that I eventually got my camera to download its contents to the PC; I offered those little Japanese figures inside some sushi - and opened them a tin of tuna. Simples! eeeks. - That's for my buddy Claire!

For my very good friend DJFreeSpirit - here's an unashamed add for her radio station - http://www.wilbeatz.com/ - some of the best add-free sounds you will hear, and unlimited requests. It's like painting to my ears! How's that for a plug!

Right, I'll see what I have to post this time and hope you enjoy it.



If you have seen this before, then I apologise.

It's a soft pastel of my old fireman's helmet, done
on Spectrum Colourfix paper which has been
finished off with a spray of fixative.

The actual size of the paper is A4, but the card mount that finishes it off makes it just that little bit bigger.

Enjoy your art.

Paul

Frustration!

Evening all - and especially to my new "follower" with the world's longest title!

Have you ever played "Frustration" which was a game I think marketed some time in the 80's? If it wasn't actually the 80's, then there's usually someone who does know such life maintaining facts, and can put me right. This edition of the blog is so called due to the fact that this week I have spent most of my time working on my art, producing so far 7 works of varying degrees of success and experimentation. And, it's only early Friday evening!

I now have a small, steadily growing mound of work. "Great", you may say; so what's your frustration? And a mighty fine, intelligent question it is too, given the above mentioned facts.

The frustration comes in the light of (or non light as you will soon find out), a distinct lack of photography and PC production. I personally prefer to photograph my work outside, in good light, maybe even "sunshine", but as we all know and love living here in England it is not always so. More often than not the floodlights "fail" - and that's only in daylight. So it has been once again this week.

Whereas it stayed dry enough for me to do a couple of small outside jobs, it was no-where good enough to get my camera, tripod, easel and works out.

Aha! I have a cunning Plan "B" to turn to (no - I was not a boy scout!). There are some pictures still on my camera which I can download onto the PC and work with them for my files, website and blog. Simples!

Nah - not in your wildest dreams. For some reason known only to the little Japanese men working within the confines of my camera, nothing seems to want to transfer from camera disk to PC. Is it some sort of a holiday in Japan I wonder?

So, as you can now see - this is leading to large chunks of frustration, coupled in between washes of watercolour and swathes of ink upon paper. Don't forget the continuous supply of tea too!

I am at somewhat of a loss, even though I have been "productive", and it's not really my fault. Ah well, at least it has not resulted in loss of life or limb, as my wife would say; so that makes it all right then!

Guess this just means you will all have to log back in again next week to see if it has corrected itself, and my face is once more a smiley. Until then, er .... here's one a did earlier!

It's after Paul Cezanne - soft pastels worked on pastel paper, sprayed with a pastel fixative and enhanced with a cardboard mount.

Enjoy your art.

Paul

Update

A very good morning to you from deep inside "our house" (it's a bungalow actually!)

Right, not much in the form of "content" in this posting, I suppose, but it still counts as a posting nevertheless, Claire!! (She knows who she is!)

The main reason is to let you know that I have been slaving over a "hot" keyboard since my last post, as I try to improve the layout, look and content of my website. It's not as easy as you think, and things that are placed in a certain position with love and care, magically re-position themselves once you decide to upload it to the internet! So, all I am really doing is to get you to try and take a look - all those who have yet to be arm twisted to do so.

Try it - you'll like it (allegedly.)

Also, and in a vain attempt to "bulk out" this posting, I have managed to sit outside on a warm, hot (almost), sunny day here in England and watercolour paint. Devout followers of this blog will know what's coming next - yes, it's the bamboo paper - which is fast achieving it's own "blog" status.

As inspiration, I followed an excercise in an art magazine - the content of which is meaningless to this blog and in the grand scheme of things in general. Important thing to note though is that I found the paper to work admirably for me. Although I did not put wash upon wash of heavily watered medium on it, the washes I did put on went on well, did not "bobble" or "peel", and the paper took it all very well, drying nicely, evenly and quickly. Bear in mind though that I was outside which does effect drying time, though not in direct sunlight. Colour retention once dry was very good.

Up to now I have to say that I have found it to be a very good paper to use, the only claim left for me to try are pastels. I have both soft and hard pastels, and will maybe give it a quick try on something small, just to complete the series of mediums. Please note that I do not use oil paints, so will not be trying them. I do have access to some, but will still not be using them.

These are, of course, only my personal observations, and I do not possess any doctorate in paper construction, colour pigmentation formulation, vario medium analytical thesis essay or shares in the paper company.

Enjoy your art.

Paul