Update

 I ended my last post telling you about the plan I concocted with my daughter Zara to make some drawings of Aberdare and see if we could interest a welsh gift store. Well, the proprietor liked the drawings enough to invite me to show them to her in person. I framed them and took them down last Saturday. To cut a long story short she agreed to sell all  of the originals, and a set of prints, and asked if I could make her some postcards. Well, yes I could.

Just as we were sorting out the small print as it were, a couple came in, very interested in the drawings, who then asked me about a potential commission sketch. Yes please. Later that day he bought one of the drawings. 

I'll come back to commissions afterwards. But the success last weekend made me think that there's the possibility I could repeat this with other towns in South Wales. I drew a blank with Port Talbot a fortnight ago. The very nice lady who runs the welsh souvenir shop in the town centre is running down her stock with a view to closing the shop permanently and is not taking on any new lines. I popped into Neath Market on the way home from Aberdare last weekend, but there is no stall selling prints, or interested in starting to sell prints. 

So I decided to try to replicate what we'd done with Aberdare. There's a number of very nice Welsh towns not so far away and I spent some time researching which of hese have gift shops similar to that of Aberdare. I don't want to approach them until I've made some sample sketches of each. I picked Penarth, just outside Cardiff to begin with. Here's the drawings

I've sent the initial email with scans to a place in Penarth, so now I'm playing a waiting game to hopefully hear back. 

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Speaking of commissions, during the week I was commissioned to produce a painting of John Wayne from the film Eldorado. This is how far I've got today -