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.