My paintings part 2 and 3

Another long silence in blog land while I've been preoccupied with carrying on doing the set of paintings for myself and also doing a seascape commission too. I've been alternating between the three paintings, as even with the drying oil, there's always a gap of two or three days while I wait for each coat to dry. But at last my two are finished and up on the wall, although not in their permanent home until I've done all five paintings, so that I can juggle them around here there and everywhere, till I'm happy. The second photo below I think is my personal best so far in 20 odd years of painting. I've really enjoyed doing these paintings, and it's been a nice change from the constant cutting of glass, which takes it toll on the arthritis in my hands.

It's probably as well that the mosaics have taken a back seat as the gallery where I show my mosaics has now sadly closed. Partly due to ever increasing overheads, and the recession, but also due to personal circumstances of Mike the owner. I am seriously thinking of doing a website with crafts on though, as this seems to be a natural progression. But for the time being that's still in the "things to do" section of my life lol.

My daughter Jenny is currently doing 4 weeks voluntary work at a tattoo shop Redskin Tattoo's, as some of you know she has been interested in tattooing for quite a long time now, and has done various tattoo's on willing victims lol !! Being at the tattoo shop has let her see that a lot of the little things she has worried about, were needless worries. Everyone working there has bent over backwards to make her feel welcome and she feels part of the family already. One thing I learnt was that tattooist have their own special handshake lol, which involves elbows touching rather hand shaking .... this is because tattooists almost always have ink covered hands and also it stops any risk of infection should they be working on a client. We've also decided that my next tattoo wil be larger one than usual and I have a yearning for it to be in the style of one of my mosaics, so designing that is also on my list of things to do, and may have to jump the queue as my daughters quite keen to get stuck into it ...not literally of course lol.

First of a set of oil paintings for myself

I finished doing this first oil painting for myself a good few days ago, but it's been really difficult to get a decent photo of it.This is because the painting has got a sheen to it, caused by me mixing a drying oil to the paints, so it doesn't take days and days to dry. The photo at the end is about the best of 20 odd photo's I've taken lol. I've already finished the 2nd painting all bar the edges of the canvas, so I'll take one of that as soon as I've done that bit. I've also made a start on a 3rd painting now. If I've got enough canvases I'm hoping to do a set of 5, all with a similar theme to them.

The sunset seascape however is causing me loads of problems. I just can't seem to get the effect of " moody clouds " that the guy wants. I've tried about 5 times now and not been happy with any of the end results. The one good thing about oils is that you can go over and over it, with layers of paint lol.

The weather has been so nice again here the last few days, so I've been able to spend a bit of time sat in the garden reading. The other day my son and daughter decided to go fishing. The first thing on the agenda was to dig for some bait, that alone was quite a challenge as they had to navigate sinking sand that had a layer of very smelly mud under it lol. I had quite a laugh watching my usually very agile kids slipping and sliding all over the place. My daughters trainer got left behind at one point when she took a step forward. By the time they'd managed to get some lug worms, the tide had gone so far out I knew there wasn't going to be much chance of catching any fish. My daughters rod was a bamboo cane from the garden, with a bit of fishing line sellotaped on the end lol, my son had the more usual type of rod. But much to my daughters delight she caught 3 crabs and my son caught nothing !!