No, it isn't all about the money. . . but . . .

 . . . the money from selling pictures and prints is always welcome. I sell a lot more prints than I sell original pictures. The last original that I sold was the 30x30 direct watercolour of the London Underground train at Southgate Station. 

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but my day job is an English teacher in a local comprehensive school. So the painting and drawing has never been more than a sideline. But when I started my Etsy shop there was some money to be made and so I stared putting all the money I made from the pictures to one side. Since before lockdown I've used this money to provide spending money whenever I go abroad on a sketching trip. I booked my last trip, to Copenhagen, back in the tail end of last year and while my daughter contributed to the flight, everything else - accommodation, spending money and the remainder of he cost of the flight came out of the picture money. And I possibly enjoy these trips all the more because something that I enjoy doing so much has paid for it. 

The next trip scheduled is Lisbon at the end of October. That's all paid for already and I've even got my spending money already - left over Euros from previous trips have accrued quite nicely. Still, the painting pot has dwindled and so it occurred to me that it might well be time to do something that has a chance of selling. Hence yesterday's painting. Here it is:-

Unlike my previous tube picture this doesn't show on old fashioned train visiting a modern platform. No, his is based on a b and w photo from about 90 years ago. It's actually Euston station. Very few underground stations have island platforms like this - an island platform stands between up and down tracks. As for the painting ittself, well, it's another direct watercolour and to be honest I used more or less the same techniques that I used in the photo below. 

The appeal, apart from the fact that I love the tube anyway and I love painting it, is that you can get a far more substantial whack of cash for it in one go than with a print. Now, whether this latest will provide that. . . we'll see.