Welcome to 2007

Well, we're just back from the festive break, managed to get a couple of watercolours done while we were away. Here's a few work in progress shots of one of them, just took these with my phone, so the qualities not that great. I'll try and get a couple of better shots of the finished paintings done over the weekend.

So, with my desire to get a bit more done this year, I thought I'd start 2007 with a nice challenging project...I'm going to enter the BP Portrait Award...There, now I've written that up here, I guess I'll just have to pull my finger out and actually get painting...This has always been one of my favourite exhibitions, the quality of the work is superb and very varied...IF I ever managed to get a picture in, it would be a great accomplishment... I have entered once before (with my painting of Neil and Chloe) , alas that picture didn't make it into the exhibition. The rejection (and expense) of not being selected for any exhibition is always disappointing, but, "no pain, no gain" as they say... And the quality of some of the other work that didn't make it was very high...So you can be rejected and still be in good company :)

Anyway, I've always wanted to get a painting into this exhibition... I thought I was running out of time. It only used to be open to artists under 40 yrs old... And time is ticking by... But luckily they appear to have changed the rules this year and opened it up to artists of all ages, so with luck I'll get a few more cracks at it.

Unfortunately the picture I was going to enter (The portrait of Jack from the last post) is too small for the competition, paintings must be at least 8" x 10". So I need to get something new painted before the March 4th deadline.

I've decided to paint another of Jack (He's a cheap, obedient model, with his fathers good looks...;). I've always fancied using the mosaic tiles in our bathroom as a backdrop. So the plan is to have Jack sat in the bath, looking every bit the sullen 11 year old, while a number of hands enter the frame offering him soap, flannels etc...which he's duly rejecting...Perhaps the title will be "Trying to teaching my son that soap is his friend..." or something like that...

I'm going to start making some sketches and taking a few photos over the next couple of days, so hopefully I'll get the first of the sketches up here over the weekend...I don't think he'd thank me for posting any reference photos, so you'll have to make do without those :)