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 !!

Things are looking up a little

I've been a bit busy this last couple of weeks, working on an oil painting commission for a friend. Hand on heart I can't say I really enjoyed doing it, because he wanted one the same as a painting I'd already done ...so that made it a bit boring. But when I took it round for him on Saturday he was really pleased with it, so that's the main thing, but I forgot to take a photo of it dohhhh. I've also been working on the first of a few paintings I want to do for myself. The walls of my little bungalow are sadly a bit bare looking, so I thought I'd give the glass things a miss for a bit and do some paintings. The first painting is almost finished, just a couple of touch ups here and there and it'll be ready to show you. Note to self ... do not keep fiddling with the painting too much lol !!!

A couple of other friends popped round unexpectedly yesterday afternoon, and I ended up with another commission !! This will be just a small oil painting as it's for in his camper van, he wants a sunset seascape. I always find seascapes quite difficult because of the reflections in the water, but hey ho I'll give it a go :o)

I seem to be getting a little bit domesticated and have baked two cakes this last week, don't fall off your chairs in shock lol. The first was a carrot cake, which we love, and the 2nd was a new recipe for me a lemon yogurt cake. On hindsight I should have doubled the quantities because before the icing even got time to set, 3/4's of it had disappeared down the throats of my son and daughter lol. I got the recipe from a very good blog I've recently started following called the English Kitchen, well worth a look at if you enjoy cooking, or even if you don't as in my case lol.

We recently acquired two additions to our garden, one was good the other not so good. The not so good, was a non working motorbike which my son was originally intending to do up for himself. He's now changed his mind and decided to strip it down and sell the parts on Ebay, so I currently have half a flipping motorbike in my garden. The other addition was much more welcome, a 3 seater garden swing. A neighbour of mine was moving out and she didn't want it any longer, so now it has a new home with us. We plan to respray it and give it a bit of colour, which probably won't surprise many of you knowing our love of colour in this house.

This is the link to the English Kitchen blog if any of you would like to go over and have a look at it. The English Kitchen