Picture yourself, when you're growing old.

Well at the moment I'm doing some paintings but I'm also doing some drawings on paper of selected scenes from my photos. I have three drawings on the go at the moment, two of them are just in their infancy and have only had an ink wash and some crayon rubbings. Yeah, that's right! Rubbings! The one below is the drawing that has come on the most. It's a scene from the top of a hill somewhere in Snowdonia. Snowdonia is in the middle of somewhere called Wales and it's very beautiful. I've been using collage from found items in the office such as envelopes and stamps. Here the envelopes have been used to shape the distant hills. Love a bit of collage me!

If you're going to San Francisco....

I went to San Francisco in the United States of America in the summer of 2010. Big Dave (my dad) and little Sade (my sister) went for a 2 week road trip and saw a lot of cool shit. One of my highlights was the time we spent in San Francisco. I don't like traveling in general, it scares me and it's too far from home. Likewise I'm not a big fan of cities. However in San Francisco's case (as in Manchester's) I had to make an exception. It was brilliant! My favorite bit was when me and my sister went out and left Big D to sleep off his steak. We went to a bar where they played The Smiths all night long. We sat and laughed and toasted the night with a black sambuca. As my sister turned to me to say something ridiculous, words did not leave her mouth. What did leave her mouth were streams of black sambuca combined with ribbons of onions (my sister had french onion soup for tea). I was covered in sick and stank of onions. When we got back to the hotel I was close to throwing Sade out the window. We woke Big D up with our arguing. In the morning Sade got the hotel to dry clean my clothes. It was the least she could do, the little shit.

Here is a painting taken from a photo I took from one of those weird San Francisco trams.

Ohhh, I'm wicked and I'm lazy

Right yes, before you start, I am fully aware of the date of my last post. That's right, a whole fucking year has passed. I'm a little older, a littler wiser and that freaking painting of the pub is still yet to be completed. In all honesty, I got bored. I took up writing Childrens books instead but then I got bored writing them and have now gone back to painting again.

I should stick to one thing shouldn't I?! Yup. There will be updates on here tonight of my current works in progress, I promise dear readers. I have been painting scenes from Snowdonia, California and Norway. In the mean time enjoy some bondage grafitti what I found in da Hood.

I follow the Moskva down to Gorky Park......

This weekend I have in equal parts been inspired and derailed by 6 non-stop hours of Power Ballads. I have never danced to Think Twice by Celine Dion before and I doubt I ever will again. So Celine is to blame for my lack of painting activity. But alas tonight with a clearer head and a steadier hand I have picked up where I left off.

One of my many problems in life is the fight between precision and scruffiness. Now I like scruffiness but I have to have a certain level of precision before scruffiness can come to the fray. Do you follow me? No? Nope me neither. Lets put that another way shall we. I like an organised shambles, a structured chaos if you will. In life, as in my painting I need to have the fundamentals set out with a structure and then once the structure is in place, I like a thick dollop of mess on top. For example I like my room messy....clothes strewn everywhere....but underneath the mess is a clean hoovered floor........behind my visually, noisy face and shambolic nature lies a good heart......with me now? Good..... and so my painting has its clean linear frame in place and now its time for the plonk on top. It's starting to come now. I hope. 

When I'm painting windows.

Just been filling in the gaps this afternoon. Painting windows different shades of blue and grey.

Goslings in the Park.

Paint is dry! Masking tape peeled and Ziggy upstairs shaking. Voila.

I went for a walk with Ziggy and I took a few snaps of some buildings I'd like to paint/draw. I also saw these little critters is Fog Lane Park. The big geese were hissing at Zig. 

Bank Holidays are for Rain and Painting.

I went to Argos on Friday last week to buy a pool cue. I don't play pool a lot, but I'd promised my friends that we would play pool at the weekend, and I thought that if I went along with my own pool cue then it would make me play better. Here is a picture of me threatening Lee with my new cue. Look how happy I look.

I took it along to the Swan on Friday night to play. I was really excited. It all turned sour pretty quickly when the landlord told me that the pool room was out of order because it was full of lawn mowers. I didn't get to play pool until Sunday once all the lawn mowers had been moved. I played 15 games and won 11. The cue made me play better. I knew it. The cue made me a pool pro. 


Anyway, I have been adding more window frames to my painting. I've gone through to 2 rolls of masking tape. The biggest worry is no longer perspective. The biggest worry is that I have discovered Ziggy has a fear of the sound of masking tape being peeled from the roll. 

I can't really wait until I'm through with this masking tape element of my painting. I want to get down to business and start drawing on it again. However I know I've got to go through a tricky smoke stage to grime up the image a tad. Yeah painting with smoke.

I know what you're thinking. It's too geometric isn't it? Yep I've been thinking that too. Its not worrying me though. 

Right then, while this is drying, I'm going to walk Zig in the rain and help him get out of this masking tape funk. I'm also going to take some snaps of Withington Community Centre, and before you ask, no, I won't be snapping pics of sweaty, young women leaving the community centre after doing Zumba sessions. I'm no pervert, I just like the  building. It's an option for my second painting in this series.