Project - Bird of Prey

I've painted a dog before, as a commission, but never a bird. If you've read my first couple of posts you'll know that I really got started after joining the artists' group by sketching in charcoal. Well, it's been quite a while since I made a pencil sketch just for the fun of it - sketches I've done in the last few months with one or two exceptions have been the basis of projected paintings. Sitting down a few evenings ago, I had a hankering to make a good. old fashioned pencil sketch again, so I took up my pad and my pencil, while I kept one eye on the telly, and this is what I came up with.

I enjoyed it so much that I started thinking about trying to paint a bird. So I took a small canvas - about 12in x 9in, and sketched out this bird of prey : -

Bird of prey - original sketch

The problem with a box canvas is that I find it difficult to get a good scan of the sketch. On my previous painting, the Heinkel Trojan Bubble Car, there was a lot of fiddly and intricate work to do. I made a conscious decision to take a bit of more impressionistic approach with this painting, at least with the background. The idea was the the more pale, almost watercolour, aspect of the background would contrast with the brighter, more vibrant and clearly defined hawk.

Hawk

Once again, the scan makes this look a little more yellow than it actually is.

Project: Messerschmidt Kr200 Kabineroller Bubble Car

After completing the Heinkel Trojan there's only one of the German trio left, and that's the Messerschmidt. At a quick glance you could mistake the Heinkel for the Isetta, and vice versa. There's no mistaking the Messerschmidt for either. Instead of entering through the front like the other two, you got into this car by opening the bubble and climbing in through the top. The seating arrangement was that there was only room for the driver in front, and for one passenger directly behind. The clever thing about this is that it meant that you didn't need to make a left hand drive version - it was equally happy either side of the road. Here's the sketch.

Messerschmidt sketch

My original plan was to alternate painting this with the Heinkel, working on this while parts of the other were drying. Didn't manage to do that, so it's had to wait for me to finish the Heinkel.

Project : Heinkel Trojan Bubble Car

I've already painted a BMW Isetta Bubble Car. I bought a pack of 12x10inch box canvases, and decided to try to paint my other two favourite German bubble cars - the famous Messerschmidt Kr200 Kabineroller, and this, the Heinkel Trojan 200 Kabine.

The Heinkel Trojan looks pretty similar to the Isetta. There are differences - the rear of the car is more tapered on the Trojan, and although the front opens like the Isetta, the steering column doesn't move with the door as it does in the Isetta. I decided to paint it with the front door open, showing some of the interior.

Here's the sketch I started with: -

Heinkel Trojan 200 sketch

I find it really difficult to get a good scan of a box canvas sketch - this is the best I could get. I was pretty pleased with the quality of the drawing, though.

It did turn out to be a pretty fiddly painting to make. This was taken about halfway through, and it had taken several hours to get this far

Heinkel Trojan 200 - about halfway through painting

The basics of the background were done first, although none of the background is actually finished. I wasn't happy yet with the trees/bushes on the right. There were details still to be painted in on the road, the kerb, the gutter and the pavement. The bases of the buildings on the left of the background and the pavement needed to be added. That's without mentioning the car. At this stage I hadn't even finished the frame.

The finished painting

I have to say that I have an emotional attachment to the Isetta painting, but I think this one is better. You can see the difference it makes having put in the details in foreground and background. This isn't a great photograph since the flash glares off certain patches of paint. I posted this since it does give you an idea of the whole painting. The scan below gives you a better idea of what the car itself actually looks like : -

I will sell this one if anybody wants to buy it - if so email me at londinius@yahoo.co.uk - but I'm perfectly happy for it to keep sitting alongside my Isetta on my den wall. A comparison between the two is just below

Update - 5/1/16 - This painting has now been sold

Project - Large Camper Van

My daughter, Zara, who is my biggest, in fact only, cheerleader asked me for another camper van. This time she asked for a bigger canvas, and so I used one of the bigger boards.

my original thought was to go for a very contemporary feel by painting the camper van large, and having a plain background of one colour, in this case yellow, to contrast with the blue van. After I'd finished the van itself, though, I really felt that the background needed to make more of a statement. So drawing on the experience of painting a nightime Las Vegas sky for one of my commissions, I went for another flaming late sunset sky, and the silhouette of hills in the background.

Camper Van at Sunset

On the negative side, having the background loses the realism of the camper van itself, since the van is too light. On the other hand, though, it does give the van an ethereal quality - I especially like the halo effect you get around the blue light on top of the van. Shame that the front bumper isn't quite right, though.
Personally I think it's quite an improvement on the first campervan I painted for Zara - but you make your own mind up:-

Commissions

After posting some of my paintings on eBay I was approached by a colleague, and asked if I would paint a picture of her daughter's dog which she could give to her for Christmas. I'll be honest, I had never started putting my paintings on Facebook to tout for business, but the fact that my colleague liked my paintings enough to want me to do one for her was very appealing. We printed off a small photo from her phone to use a reference for this painting.

Commission 1

There's very little fiddly work on this, and so it didn't take a huge amount of time. What I'd said to my colleague was that I would only do the painting on the understanding that she said if she didn't like it, since I wouldn't be offended. If she liked it, and if she wanted it when it was finished, then I said we could negotiate afterwards. She did want it, and so we negotiated, as in I asked her what she wanted to pay for it, and accepted her offer. I don't feel comfortable discussing money here and now, but if you are interested in a commission, email me at londinius@yahoo.co.uk, and I will let you know how much I usually ask.

That was a straightforward commission since it was on my usual sized 12x10inch canvas board, and it was basically a matter of using the one reference photograph. This led, though, to a rather more complicated commission. Another colleague wanted a painting for her daughter, who had recently been married in Las Vegas. She wanted it to incorporate the name of the place they were married, a banner with her daughter and son in law's names, and pictures of some of the places they visited during their honeymoon. I've blanked out their names and the date in the interests of privacy, but here is what I came up with: -

Honeymoon Wedding Commission

As it's a complicated commission, this was the first time that I felt I needed to design the whole thing on paper before starting. The finished painting is actually pretty faithful to the original design. My idea was to use a bold, rather stylised Stars and Stripes as the background, with pictures of the Hollywood Sign, the Golden Gate, Alcatraz and Laguna Beach all surrounding the Las Vegas sign. I tried to blend the images into each other, and I don't think I did a terrible job. The Golden Gate is particularly striking, as is the desert sky around the Las Vegas sign. when I painted this I soon realised I was going to need a bigger board than my usual 12x10 inch, and so opted for 14x18in. As it's larger, and took hours more work it was a little more expensive than the first. again, email me for details.

A couple of days before the end of term another colleague approached me, asking if I could paint a Christmas present. She wanted a bright and colourful painting of an Amsterdam scene. I'll be honest, I thought it was going to be a push to get it done in time for Christmas, but then again I like a challenge. After a fairly intensive weekend's work, it was ready : -

Commission 3

Hours of work went into it , those buildings are very intricate. But I have to say that I'm very pleased with what I managed. The sky and the water are good, and those are the best trees I've managed so far. It's on another big canvas board. My colleague was pleased, and that's the main thing.

More Vehicles

When I was painting the booths, kiosks and boxes, it occurred to me that an old fashioned American gas station might make a nice subject. I found a photograph I really liked, and this was the reference for this painting: -

Little Red Corvette stopping for gas

I think it's quite a lot more accomplished than my previous road vehicle painting of Zara's camper van. The star of the painting is the car, though, not the kiosk. There's a couple of little touches I really like about it - the headlights, windscreen and hubcaps, as it happens.

This painting is still available for sale - contact me by email at londinius@yahoo.co.uk

I hadn't yet painted anything just for myself, because I really wanted a picture of it. This next one was the first painting which I always intended I was going to keep and have up in my den wall: -

BMW Isetta Bubble Car

I love German bubble cars. There. I've said it, the love that dares speak it's name. While I know with my head that a Chevrolet Corvette, the car in the first picture is in pretty much every way a better and more desirable car than a German Bubble Car, the fact is that given a free choice between a Corvette and an Isetta, like the one in the picture above, I'd take the Isetta. This painting has some lovely bits, and some less lovely bits. The white grills on the front don't work, they look wonky, I'm afraid. Doesn't matter, though, I say it as shouldn't, but this is up in my den, and it makes me smile. So this one is not for sale, I'm afraid.

This next painting is a little bit cynical. I say cynical as I painted it expressly with a view to selling it. This is a Blackpool tram.

Blackpool Tram

I just had a feeling that there would be enough tram lovers out there that one of them might want to buy it. which is not to say that I don't like trams, because I do - I love them. The scan has really accentuated the yellows I used in this painting - they're not as bright or as obvious in the original. It's my first really overcast sky, and I'm very pleased with the effect. Again, it's worth comparing this picture with Zara's camper van since I feel it shows quite an improved level of skill.

This one has been sold, although I would be perfectly happy to paint a similar subject as a commission.

Watercolours too?

In one of my earlier posts I made the point that I'd only ever used water colours in the past, and frankly hadn't been at all pleased with what I came up with. The basic problem I still feel is that I don't do delicacy and subtlety very well at all.

Another of my daughters, Jenn (I have 4 altogether, and 1 son) gave me a small watercolour field set for my birthday, and so I had a go at a couple of paintings. This is the first : -

Swansea Mumbles tram

I think that this has some good things and some bad things. The tram is quite well painted, and a real contrast to everything else in the picture. The water actually looks better than it does in this scan, and the sky is not grey as it appears here. But I'm afraid that while it worked painting the tram itself boldly, as I would use acrylic, I don't think for one minute that it has worked anything like as well painting the tracks and the foreground. The rocks in front of the tram aren't very good at all in my opinion.

As for the subject matter, the Swansea and Mumbles railway - which became the tramway - was the world's first ever passenger railway. It was horse drawn when it opened, and it did so a good few years before the Stockton and Darlington Railway - some of whose services were steam locomotive hauled - opened for business. The council, with the foresight councils have shown since time immemorial, decide to pull up the tracks and junk the trams back in the 60s.

Update - This picture has since been bought

This next one is based on memories of my first trip to Wales in 1976. As a mad keen steam nerd I was desperate to visit Dai Woodham's scrap yard, and finally did so at the grand old age of 12, having bedgered my parents into taking me and my brothers on a day trip excursion. Woodham's became a mecca for steam enthusiasts throughout the 70s and 80s because, like many independent scrap yards, they bought many locomotives and wagons from British Railways, when they stopped using steam locomotives and tank engines in the late 60s. Unlike all the others, Woodhams put off cutting up the engines for years, concentrating on cutting up hundreds of coal wagons first.

Great Western Railway Locomotive - Barry Island c. 1976

Now, as a painting this had got good points and bad points. I used the watercolours as I would use acrylics, and this has worked well in places, and not so well in others. The grass is very vivid, and I like it. I also think that the lower portion of the front end of the engine with the buffers, and the cylinders is very good. The rusty boiler though has too much of a contrast between the main body with the rust, and the shadow. It's a shame, since it's not that far off being a decent painting.

Update - Jan 2016 - This painting has since been sold

Booths, Boxes and Piers

My Blackpool Pier Kiosk painting started me off on a series of booths and boxes. The next three pictures on this page are all painted on 12x10in canvas board, and all in acrylic.

Wendover Signal Box

This is a far less gaudy building than the ice cream kiosk, yet just as beautiful in its own way. After all, if a signal box were to be built today, what would it be? Answer - a featureless concrete, or possibly brick box, with little or nothing to draw the eye. Heaven knows, they didn't get everything right back in the past, but you have to admire the eye for small detail that would create such a pleasing functional building, even though most people would only ever see it as they were flashing past on a train. This has the most dramatic sky that I'd attempted up to this point. Again, I haven't sold it up to the time of writing, and if you're interested, contact me at londinius@yahoo.co.uk

Now, I was born and brought up in London. I've lived in Port Talbot, South Wales for about 3 decades, my wife and my kids are Welsh. However, I also have Scottish roots, and I tend to think that to a large part Scottish architecture is a well kept secret. For example, when you think of Glasgow, architecture probably isn't one of the first things to come to mind, yet it has some wonderful, wonderful buildings, both old and modern. Edinburgh, to be fair, is a lot more valued for the quality of its buildings. However, it's the street furniture that really interested me, which is why I painted this Edinburgh Police Box

Police Information Box - Edinburgh Grassmarket

Now, your first thought may well be - TARDIS! Look again though. This is a very different shape from the TARDIS police boxes which were once a common sight throughout other cities and towns in the UK. Edinburgh had the foresight to keep a significant number of it's own distinctively shaped boxes, even though, as you can see from the painting, they're not necessarily all kept in pristine condition. Possibly the best things about this painting are the buildings and the red phone box in the background. I really like street scenes, and I think you can maybe get an idea of this from the background. 

This painting has been sold since.

As I said, I was born and brought up in London, and London is not short on its own interesting little booths and boxes. I was taking part in a charity event in London in September, and I took the photographs which I used for reference when I made this painting. 

Tollbooth - South side of Albert Bridge, London

I have thing about bridges, in particular bridges over the Thames in central London. So the toll booths at either end of the Albert Bridge were a natural choice for me to paint.The Albert Bridge is a stunning, wedding cake of a confection of a bridge - it was designed by Joseph Bazalgette, the man Londoners have to thank for their life saving system of sewers, Bazalgette also designed the stately Hammersmith Bridge. It's something of an experimental painting for me. I was far more bold with the cloudy sky, and I had not tried painting water before. I really rather like the slightly off kilter bridge on the left. This one is available, and if you are interested then contact me at londinius@yahoo.co.uk.

Update - This painting has since been sold

After Blackpool Pier - well, at least the kiosk, it was a natural thing to paint the southern pretender to Blackpool's crown, Brighton. 

Deckchairs and Brighton Pier

This was experimental in as much as I painted it on canvas paper rather than canvas board. I found it harder to work on this than on the boards which I've used for most of my paintings. I think the pier itself is nicely painted, and I like it's slightly misty, ghostly quality, contrasting with the bold, simplistic depiction of the deck chairs on the promenade. Available for sale - email me at londinius@yahoo.co.uk

Update - this -painting has since been sold

How do you decide what to paint?

Good question.

I found a smashing website called Painters Online. Here's the link: -
Painters Online
Now, this is quite open and honest about the fact that it belongs to The Artist - and - Leisure Painter - magazines, but they don't ram it down your throat and there's no hard sell. If you join, then you can post pictures of your work into an online gallery. People can comment on your work if they wish. It's a little intimidating at first because the standard of other people's work is so high, but then this was the same mental hurdle I'd had to get over when I joined the Artists' Group, only on a larger scale. I think that when I realised that it isn't a competition, and the point is to try to be as good as you can without worrying about how you compare to other people's work it was a very liberating moment. I mean, there's nothing wrong if you only want to paint for yourself, and you get the pleasure from making your paintings, and then looking at them yourself afterwards. But personally I want to know what other people think. I want fresh pairs of eyes on them, even if the feedback isn't great.

Apart from posting your own work, looking at other artists' work can give you ideas for paintings. I'm not talking about plagiarism. Let me give you an example. The closest cities to Port Talbot, where I live, are Swansea and Cardiff. I searched the gallery for any paintings of either city. One of the paintings which came up was a beautiful painting of an old fashioned sales kiosk in Cardiff. Now, I love this sort of Victorian/Edwardian thing. I googled around the net for ideas, and the result , eventually, was this painting: -

Ice Cream Kiosk - Blackpool Pier

Though I say it as shouldn't, I really like this painting. I think that if you compare it to my first couple of paintings you can see the improvement. The draughtsmanship is not bad at all. I used all I'd learned from my beach paintings. The real improvement though is in the sky. I like this so much more than the rather weak and wishy washy skies of my earlier paintings, and I think that I even managed to pull off a few clouds. I think that the pier planking is effective, as is the glass, with the shadowy figure behind it. 

I liked this so much I framed it, and it's in my den. I also encouraged me to think of a series of booths and boxes paintings. At time of writing I haven't tried to sell it, but if you are interested, then email me at londinius@yahoo.co.uk

Update - This painting has since been sold

Getting on Facebook

If you're on Facebook, then you can create your own Artist's Page for nothing. It's really simple - on your home page you'll have option of creating pages. It takes you through the whole process from start to finish. You can find the link on my first post in this blog - oh what the hell - you can have it again here : -

David Clark Artist Page Facebook

I also began posting scans or photos of my pictures onto my status. This had the effect of alerting friends and family that I have actually started painting, and after I posted the painting of Ollie and me on the beach, my Mother in Law in Spain immediately left a message asking me when I was going to do one for her. So using the same set of photographs Mary and I had taken on the beach, I painted this: -

Ollie on the Beach

Without the overpowering presence of me in my faded jeans and blue hoodie this one works a lot better. When you make a painting it's sometimes funny the things that you'll end up liking and disliking about it. I don't like the way I've painted Ollie's left leg. On the other hand I really like the seaweed and the white shell in the foreground. To cut a long story short this really upset Phillipa, Ollie's mum. She wanted it, and was most upset that I'd promised it to my mother in law. Still, a promise is a promise, and this is currently hanging on my mother in law's living room wall in a little village called San Isidro. 

We took Ollie back to the beach a week or two later, and I took some more photos. Mary had passed a few comments along the lines of - why are you giving all the paintings of Ollie away? Are you going to do one for us? So I made this next painting: -

Ollie on the Beach with sandcastle

This is what can happen when you start repeating yourself. Being dispassionate and objective, this is not a bad painting at all. The sea is better than in the previous two pictures, and the way I've painted the footsteps and tracks in the sand are quite a bit better than anything in the previous two paintings. But the figure just isn't quite as engaging. And, it could be any little boy, while the previous painting is clearly our Ollie. Technically, though, I think that there's aspects of this that show improvement.

First Paintings

Now, before I let you see the first paintings I produced since joining the artists' group, I'd like to enter some special pleading on my own behalf.

* I had never used acrylic paints before
* I had not picked up a paintbrush in anger for the best part of two decades
* I have had no training whatsoever

So. . . here it is

LMS Railway William Stanier 'Duchess' Class Locomotive

Actually, looking at it, it isn't (quite) as bad as I originally thought, and I did have some tentative interest in it expressed by another member of my artists' group, who thought a relative might be interested. Nothing eventually came of that, but that's fine.

There are things I really don't like about it. For one thing I had no idea how to work acrylic paint. I don't know a huge amount more now, but I know I could do it better now. In terms of draughtsmanship, the driving wheels are horrible. After I'd done it, the professional artist in my group gave me some good advice about painting steam , and I know that I could do the steam better now as well.

Update- This painting has since been sold

It isn't so terrible, though, as to have made me give up. In fact, I was bitten by the painting bug, if anything. My next attempt was to try to paint a VW campervan. My daughter Zara, who had taken me to join the artists' group, had been unfailingly encouraging, and she is mad about campervans. As a thank you, I painted this for her: -

VW Camper Van in San Francisco

If I'm honest, it suffers from some of the same issues as the previous painting. The draughtsmanship isn't great, and the paint hasn't been worked in the way that it could be. Still, it was a little bit of a development. IN the first painting I'd sketched the picture out on the canvas, then painted it. In this one I sketched the image, then painted the whole canvas a watery, creamy yellow colour. This shows through in places under the green of the grass in the background, and the light blue of the sky, and it just gives the painting a little more glow, appropriate to the fact it's San Francisco. Zara liked it so much she photographed it, and put it on Facebook.

In my day job I work as a teacher. When the long summer holiday came round my wife and I took our grandson out to the beach one day, and I took my camera. Based on one of the photos Mary took, I painted this picture

"The Master and the Apprentice" - Me and my grandson

It isn't perfect. I'm not totally happy with the figure of my grandson. These are the clothes he was wearing on the day, but the light colours merge too much into the sand, especially compared with my figure, which I'm actually rather pleased with - again these are the clothes I was wearing on the day. Painting the canvas yellow to start with worked again, since it gives some nice textural variation in the sand. Technically I think I worked the paint a lot better blending the blue, white and yellow for the water streams on the beach just behind the two of us. Another point as well, making the foam on the water showed just how effective a little white highlighting can be.

It's the first painting I made where I can say that although I can see drawbacks, I'm pleased with the result. Not just me either. My oldest daughter, Phillippa, who is the young man's mum, insisted on having it, and she's had it framed and it's on the wall in her house. Doesn't look bad either. 

Bearing in mind the positive comments I'd received when Zara posted the photograph of the campervan on Facebook, I created my artist's page, and posted this one.

Selling on eBay

I won't lie to you, I found that selling my first drawing at the Beach Festival was addictive. With no events coming up where the group could exhibit/sell any pictures in the foreseeable future, I decided to have a go at selling on eBay.

I've sold a few different items on eBay in the past, so listing a picture seemed relatively straightforward. Choosing which to sell was a little more tricky. At first, I wasn't confident enough to try to sell a painting, so I listed another of my old faithful charcoal drawings.

Basically, I really like old fashioned methods of transport - steam engines, trams, buses, and I thought that it would be worth seeing if there was any interest. I listed it, and .  .  . it didn't sell. The thing about eBay, though, is that it will automatically re-list an item that doesn't sell, and in the second week, this one was bought. 

Now, selling your art on eBay does have some drawbacks, it seems to me. In no particular order: -

* There is a LOT of competition. If you list a piece of artwork, it takes a few minutes for the listing to go live. Once the listing goes live, it only takes a couple of minute for enough new items to be listed to force yours right down the page. So it can be very difficult to get your work noticed by people who might conceivably want to buy it.

* I wouldn't exactly call eBay an electronic car boot sale, but like a car boot sale, a large number of people are looking for bargains. It's worth having a good look at the prices other pieces of artwork are going for. Put in simple terms, you're not going to get rich by selling your art on eBay. 

But that was okay, since I was more interested in seeing if people liked my artwork enough to buy it, rather than to make stacks of cash from it. Emboldened by this success, and mindful of the fact that the first drawing I sold was a locomotive, I listed this sketch of the Southern Railway Merchant Navy Class locomotive "Clan Line"

In all fairness it is probably not quite as well executed as the 9F, but whatever the reason it didn't sell.  This was a bit of a shame since by this time I'd sketched a few other pictures which I might well have tried to sell: -

Southern Railway - Lord Nelson

B Type Bus

British Railways Tank Engine

Actually, if you look at these three pictures they do illustrate a point about equipment and materials. The first one, the Lord Nelson picture, was carried out on a page from a cheap sketchbook. The paper is coarser yet thinner, and as a result, when I blended the charcoal the effect was to make it all grainy and murky. Now, this actually worked well for a couple of other sketches, but was, in my opinion, totally wrong for this. The other drwings on this page were made using the same charcoal pencils, but on premium quality paper. 

Well, that's not quite the end of the story as regards selling on eBay. By mid December 2015 I found the number of paintings I'd made was really starting to proliferate. So, as much to clear the decks as anything, and bearing in mind it was a tram I'd managed to sell previously, I listed this painting of a Blackpool tram: -

I listed this with a starting price at which I didn't mind selling, but also with a Buy It Now price. It received one offer. The buyer, a lovely chap from Liverpool, was most apologetic, saying that he never expected to win it with his first offer, and that he'd been prepared to pay more. Well, there you go, that's the way the cookie crumbles. At least it gave me a tiny bit more space, and a little cash to buy a few more supplies, and that's how I suggest you look upon selling on eBay - a way of decluttering and making a bit of pin money in the process. 

Welcome - About Me

Hello! I'm an amateur artist living and working in Port Talbot, South Wales. I say artist, although I'm still not all that comfortable using the word. I'll try to explain.

I've always loved drawing and sketching as long as I can remember, but never did anything with it. I let myself be persuaded from taking Art as a subject at school, and in the following decades whenever I've occasionally picked up a paintbox I've never liked the results. This is probably because I was trying to use watercolours, and I'm afraid that subtlety and delicacy are not things that I do particularly well.

My middle daughter, Zara, took firstly a BTEC national in Art, and then a degree in ceramics. She graduated a couple of years ago. During the summer she was looking for an artists' group to join, and she found the Afan Nedd Artists' Group meeting in Port Talbot. On a whim I said that I'd accompany her on her first visit. I loved what I found, and although Zara never came back, I joined that same night, and I've never missed a meeting since.

I did find it a little bit intimidating at first. Not the other artists - they are all lovely, and welcoming, and encouraging. What I did find intimidating was the quality of their work. As far as I know only one of the group is a professional artist, yet it seemed to me that they were all producing wonderful work, and I was afraid that people would think mine was rubbish. So at first I stuck to what I knew with sketching.

The mental breakthrough for me came when I tried using charcoal. I took my camera out around and about Port Talbot, and used one of the photos as the basis for my first ever charcoal picture -

It's relatively simple, but it showed me that charcoal is certainly a medium that I can work with. At this time the group had hired a stall in the Aberavon Beach festival, and I was asked if I wanted to put anything on display/for sale. All I had was the picture above, but at the last minute I decided to have a go at making something a little more complicated. Going back to when I was a kid, I was always interested in steam engines, and had sketched loads in the past. So this is what I did: -

For the purist, this is a British Railways 9F steam locomotive - the last class of locomotive produced by British Railways. The great thing about this was. . . only two pictures were sold on the day, and this was one of them. 

It wasn't so much that this was sold, although I won't lie to you, I didn't turn the money down. No, what was more important at this stage was that it was concrete proof that somebody, who didn't know me from Adam, actually liked what I did, and liked it enough to want to part with cash for it. 

Since then I've picked up my watercolours again, with results which I still think demonstrate my weaknesses rather than my strengths, and had my first goes at acrylics. I'll go into more detail in future posts, but basically my first painting was flawed, but not quite bad enough to put me off for good. As I started to develop more confidence, I created an artist's page on Facebook - which you can find here : - https://www.facebook.com/daveclarkart