Coffee Shop Laptop

Coffee Shop Laptop

(Acrylic on canvas board, 8x8 in)

One of the great advantages of a mobile phone is that, if you always carry it with you, you always have a digital camera available. No need to lug around a heavy camera on the off-chance that you might need it. As a consequence, when I stopped for coffee and a sticky bun recently, I was able to photograph a couple of people sitting in a branch of Caffè Nero in Newcastle, and to do so in a surreptitious manner. This is one of them.

It's a simple picture but the composition is one of the classics - a triangle or pyramid - and I like the colour palette I've used. So I find I’m inordinately satisfied with it.

 

Private View at Bailiffgate

Across the mezzanine.

Three small paintings in a display case.

Three Prague  Tram paintings.

Guests.

A while ago the Private View for the Bailiffgate show was changed from last Tuesday night , when the weather was as decent as we've come to expect for summer, to Friday when the forecast was for torrential rain and flood warnings were out for just about everywhere you could think of. As a result the turnout of guests was not all we might have wished for. Even the solid gold I'll be theres I've come to count on called me up and apologised for their absence.

Luckily, the  Bailiffgate Museum is run entirely  by volunteers who do a sterling  job and many of them turned up to help dispel any feeling of abandonment. The chairman made a splendid speech and overall we had a good time.


In keeping with the zeitgeist, my camera batteries failed on me and I had to keep taking them out and turning them round just to take these four photographs.

Back to Work

Sometimes Falling, Sometimes Flying
(charcoal and compressed charcoal on paper)

Who's a lucky boy, then? That nice Patsy123 bought me a digital camera for Xmas, so I can now bring you the latest breaking news from the Zip Studio.

I went to the Art Club today to wish Compo & Clegg and the boys a Happy New Year. While I was there we got on the subject of the People Show and how I intended to submit something as usual.

That was when I realised that my habit of not getting a new calendar written up with January's birthdays and events before the beginning of January can be a dangerous practice. Pictures for the People Show have to be submitted next Monday.

Bugger.

I knew what it was I intended to submit, but it isn't finished. It's based on the drawing above, done when I was really having rather a bad time of it. A very personal picture. I'd started the painting but when things improved I didn't feel the urge to go on with it.

Now, in the depths of miserable winter, I knew it was the right painting to move along. So here it is back on the easel in the studio. I think it can be finished in time, but if things go wrong with it, it'll be a struggle. But hey, painting's all about struggle!