CARDS AND COPYRIGHTS

Two or three weeks ago, I mentioned my plan to produce greeting cards, featuring my artwork, to sell in the run-up to Christmas this year. I've taken this a couple of tentative stages further now, having saved a few images into a "cards" folder, using Photofiltre, which is an ideal package for this purpose. It has the advantage, over such sophisticated applications as Paint Shop Pro, that it's free, and it does all the clever things that I need it to, such as size reduction, cropping and adjustment of colour and brightness. I've searched the large number of paintings in my Tait Gallery folder, and cropped out parts of some of these images to use as card designs. I'm also hoping to have these cards available in the Products Database of the new all-singing, all-dancing website upgrade (which is still in the making), and I've emailed my web designer on that subject today.

Progress has been steady (how often have I said that in these posts!) on the painting commissions, and I've just about finished the smallest of these, the tiny picture of the SS "Clermiston", on which my client's grandfather served as crewman. I probably won't display it here, or in the website gallery, simply because of its diminutive size and odd shape.

The subject of the big canvas, taking shape quite nicely on the easel in the "back studio", will regrettably not feature on website or blog either when it is finished, for a different reason entirely. It is because I am closely following a painting by another artist (who lived about 200 years ago), in this work, and I fear reprisals in the form of nasty letters from copyright lawyers. In fact the same could apply to the third commissioned work, which is an eagle's eye view of a certain cruise ship. The photograph, on which I am relying for my details, could only have been taken from an eagle or an aircraft (probably the latter!), and could well form part of the cruise ship operator's advertising copy.

You can't be too careful these days. Have a nice week!

P.S. My web designer thinks the cards are an excellent idea for an item for sale on the website, both singly and in sets. Now all I've got to do is produce them!