EYEMOUTH

Last week I promised that I'd have two more completed paintings to show you today. I almost succeeded, but the second one still has a couple of details to complete, so I've had to hold it over until I've done those.

Meantime, here is the "Dougals", a seine-netter which worked out of Eyemouth in the 1950s, approaching her home port after another trip. This work was a commission, and if anyone out there in the blogosphere would like a painting of a favourite boat or scene, I would be delighted to do the work. My contact details are on my website www.tait-gallery.co.uk, which also features many of my previous artworks, as well as a Gallery Shop, where original paintings, giclee prints and greeting cards are available to purchase.

STILL WHITE!

As I intimated as a possibility in my last post (sound the bugles!), my final pre-Christmas stall of 2010 at the Toll Clock Centre was snowed off on Thursday, which was also, with predictably immaculate timing, the day the blizzards struck. I spent a slightly more productive day in the comparative warmth of my studio, working on commissioned works mostly. I now have three of these to occupy me, with another possibly in the offing, and, while none of these will make my fortune, they are interesting jobs to do.

Two of the new commissions are of historic Shetland fishing boats, one of the paintings featuring two of these, the other only one. Both pictures have been ordered by descendants of the owners of the vessels to be depicted. One of these boats was lost at sea as a result of an engine-room fire, another going to her watery grave, some years after being sold by her Shetland owners, while on admiralty duties during the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940. I'm not sure what happened to the third boat. She probably ended her days aground, as many of her contemporaries did, in one of the many Shetland inlets or "voes", being left to rot, having become obsolete with the advancement of fishing boat design and propulsion. I will do my best, as always, to bring them to colourful life again on canvas - they still make nice subjects for seascape paintings!

The third commission, which I may have mentioned in a previous post, is of a slightly later fishing vessel which was completed at Macduff in 1940, and which spent the 1950s fishing out of Eyemouth. I'll be painting her coming into her home port from the fishing grounds.

While the commissions pay the bills, I'm very conscious of the passage of time, as it careers towards my next scheduled exhibition at Catterline in November/December of 2011. Many things will have to be organised before then, such as Northlink ferry journeys, accommodation for myself and my driver, publicity material and grants to cover part of the cost of the above. I just hope I can muster at least one willing (and fit!) helper to assist with the hanging when that time comes. Oh, and somewhere along the line I'll need to do some paintings for it too!

I plan to go out to my mother's on the morning of Christmas Eve, as I usually do, and should be there until sometime late on Christmas day. I'll be trying to make myself useful, helping to deal with the turkey, and acting as kitchen porter on the day. Mother has admitted that, at 94, she doesn't feel up to making her usual butter-scotch trifle for sweet, which is disappointing, but Mary has volunteered her sticky toffee pudding, which will be a worthy substitute. I'll probably attempt some snow clearance, although the brae was under about a foot of the white stuff for most of its length on Friday, more has fallen since, and more is forecast during the coming week. Ertie's 4x4 fanbuster only made it to the top at the third attempt on Friday, the snow lying on a base of black ice.

It's all a bit grim, but beautiful in its own way. While I hate this wintry weather, it does provide some spectacular skies to admire and artistically appreciate. Since childhood, I have always noticed the intensity of the purple and orange of cumulus snow-cloud, particularly in the afternoons around sunset. Have a happy, peaceful and colourful Christmas!

ARTWORK, OLD FRIENDS AND ERTIE'S FANBUSTER

While Shetland has not suffered the same volume of snowfall which has been making people's lives a misery on the Scottish mainland, it has been a few feet deep in places, and it was enough to cause problems for the gallant SIC snow-plough/gritter crews. It was also enough to deter people from visiting the Toll Clock Centre, where I sat in my thermals at my stall on Thursday. My takings for the day did sneak into three figures, but not as much as I would have expected for the 2nd of December. There just weren't many people about, although I did meet a few old friends.

One such old chum was my fellow painter Liam O'Neill, down from Unst for a quick shopping trip. I have known him since my art college days, and I had the pleasure of his company for part of the morning. We talked about our art, our ailments and old times, and it was good to see him looking so well. My thanks must also go to Neil Robertson, who brought me a very welcome cup of coffee, and to my sister Mary, who gave up part of her lunch break to look after the stall while I took a much-needed pit-stop. She sold the first print of the day too!

I've received another commission this week, and I've been doing a bit of online research in connection with this. It is for a painting of an Eyemouth-based fishing boat, and views of the mouth of this busy harbour, to use for information on the background, would be gratefully received. My customer is furnishing me with a photograph of the boat itself, the "Dougals" (BK247). I've been working on another order too, a painting of two old Shetland fishing boats, which means that, in the limited daylight hours available to me just now, the stock/exhibition works have been taking a back seat again.

We mustered another shovel-party for the road up to mother's house on Monday. I'm ashamed to say that this time I never had a shovel in my hand, most of the spadework being done by my nephew, his wife, son and father, also joined by a neighbour and my sister Mary, while my sister Thelma and I attended to catering matters indoors. The labourers dined on bannocks filled with salt beef and tongue, washed down by copious quantities of tea. The snow had not been as deep as I had feared - nothing like as deep as when the first such party was mustered in early February. This time, Graham Robinson had no trouble ascending the Brugarth brae in his minibus, which bore my mother safely back to the warmth of her own home, after her fortnight's break at the Wastview Care Centre in Walls.

I visited her again on Friday, when I paid my "normal" call on her with her pension and shopping from the Whiteness shop, as well as her medication from the Scalloway surgery. My driver was Ertie Burgess, who recently took delivery of his formidable new 4x4 taxi which I have begun referring to as the fanbuster. "Fan" is the Shetland dialect word for a deep snowdrift, and I was surprised to see one, about two feet deep on the left-hand side, at the top of the Brugarth brae when we arrived on Friday morning. It never even slowed the vehicle down - it burst through the snow as if it wasn't there!

The worst of the snow seems to be over, for the time being at least. The Met Office are forecasting wintry showers and icy roads for the coming week, and the temperature is certainly not going to be high, but no heavy falls of the white stuff are being predicted for here. I'm very glad about that. I hope, wherever you are, you keep safe this week.

BLOWING IN THE WIND

This morning having dawned bright and breezy, I hung a batch of shirts on the line, and they came in dry and un-seagull-decorated at lunchtime. It's been a good week really, both in terms of weather and work, with the oft-times-promised-and-never-delivered website e-commerce upgrade finally up and running, and with good progress to report on two of my artwork commissions. It also appears to have been a good week for using hyphens!

Monday, which dawned fine but clouded over with drizzle later, was one of work on the charity painting (of winter over Baltasound), during the morning, and the commission of the "St. Clair" (IV) off Girdleness lighthouse in the afternoon. In between, I concocted myself a leftover pork and rice creation (which was palatable) for lunch, and took a walk down to the shop for essential supplies. In the evening (they're beginning to draw in!) I attended to the burgeoning contents of my Outlook Express inbox, and did a few other minor tasks on the computer.

Tuesday, which was rather cloudy but calm (brilliant for midges!) was spent on the same two artworks, with the welcome interruption of a visit by my sister Thelma, with whom I had elevenses and a natter. I made myself some kedgeree for lunch, and remembered to put my bin-bag out for collection by the "essie-kert" squad. In the evening I phoned my brother, and came to the realisation that my plan for a trip to the mainland over the first weekend in October is now not going to happen. Certain things have to fall in place for this to be successful. Firstly, I must have an outside cabin on the ferry to myself. This is a selfish indulgence, I know, but I spend two of my three nights away on that boat, and I want it to be a pleasant experience. Secondly, my brother has to be available, so that we can spend the Saturday cruising the roads of the north-east of Scotland in his car, with me busy taking loads of photographs of the picturesque scenes we come across for my reference library. Thirdly, there has to be decent accommodation available for the Saturday night in Aberdeen. On this occasion, the boat is fully booked and my brother is otherwise engaged. The trip is being postponed until late March next year, just before the period covered by my Northlink Ferries discount vouchers runs out.

Wednesday's weather was mostly fine, with light winds. It was also a big day, the one set aside for getting the final work done on the website upgrade. Igor Mournly, my web designer, arrived, as arranged, at 10am, and we set about putting the greeting cards on the product database, and getting the other elements together for a fully e-commercialised online sales system, complete with the appropriate basket and checkout functions. We hit some technical snags, of course, and, at midday, Igor set off back to his own office to get these ironed out, leaving me to make a light lunch and spend another afternoon on the two commissioned paintings. Later still, I took the painting of Johnshaven harbour to the post office for onward shipment to its new owner in Cornwall. This cost me £38.95 to send, which hurt a bit, so, to numb the pain, I had a couple of pints of the yellow stuff in the Lounge. On my return home, I discovered that Igor had been doing some good work on the website, and had made a test order of £0.01, using my online payment system in conjunction with Paypal. The thing was clearly working. I phoned him my thanks for the generosity of his payment, which will no doubt be added to the amount of his invoice later!

Thursday was bright and clear, although a little low cloud occasionally threatened during the day. I'd arranged to make a soupy lunch for my sister Mary and myself, and it now looked as if I would have a third guest in the shape of Igor, who was coming along to do the final preliminaries to going "live" with the website upgrade. All in all, it was the most chatty lunch that has taken place at the Tait Gallery for some time, with the food being also acceptable, and the website mission being accomplished too. Then my two apparently satisfied guests left, leaving me to clear up the clutter, a task which took me over half-an-hour, and do a little more artwork. I spent the evening chilling out a bit.

http://www.tait-gallery.co.uk/

Friday dawned and remained bright and mostly sunny, with light south-easterly winds. I took my usual trip out to mother's, collecting her pension and pre-ordered shopping along the way. I did the usual Friday things, such as watering the greenhouse, frying mother's favourite fish lunch of whiting in batter for lunch, clearing up afterwards, making tea and coffee, and generally helping her out with things. She is keeping quite well, if you disregard her severe mobility problems (which it's difficult for her to do!). She is now into her 95th year, and just getting through a day is a bit of a struggle for her, but she has decided that she'll stick it out at her home at Brugarth, Whiteness, for another winter, provided that my sister Mary carries out her promise to stay with her if the weather gets snowy and the access road becomes problematic for the home helps. Everyone got a fright over the severity of last winter, and no-one wants another like it - ever again.
Back at my flat in the evening, I made the mistake of trying to assemble a self-assembly cardboard display unit for my greeting cards. All my efforts at self-assembly tend to self-dissemble within a very short space of time, and this project never really got off the ground. The bits just didn't seem to fit. After an hour I realised that I was unequal to this struggle, threw the parts, which were now looking decidedly grubby and furry, into the bin, and ordered a couple of ready-assembled plastic units from a display units shop on the internet. Hang the expense!

Yesterday was also bright and sunny, with a moderate south-easterly breeze. I spent the morning on the "St. Clair" painting, and the afternoon on the cloud reflections in the water of the Baltasound picture, quite a tricky operation which I nearly finished before the end of the afternoon. I didn't do a lot in the evening, except watch what was watchable on the box. For some reason I hadn't yet seen the third film in the Bourne trilogy, which turned out to be even more frenetic, violent, scowling and frankly daft than the previous two, but it was fun to watch - a bit like Young Guns meets the Wacky Races, with a touch of Rocky thrown in.

And so to today, and I am determined to get this posted. I failed last Sunday, due to the fact that I spent the morning wrapping a painting and then went for a run out west with my sister Thelma in the afternoon. (I did the same run this afternoon, but I had most of this written beforehand.) Must do better, as they say! Have a nice week.

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!

ARTY STUFF

Looking back over previous posts, I see that it's three weeks since I last mentioned progress on my own artwork. I apologise for this, and hope to make amends for it here, as there is quite a lot of news, although I have no new completed artworks to tell you about. I hope to have more soon.

I have been working on a commissioned landscape/seascape of Lerwick's Sooth End, and I hope to have the buildings finished by the close of play tomorrow. I then have to attend to the piers, boats, foreground sea and reflections therein, so I'm still some way off completion, for which I have a deadline of 16th June. I am still hopeful of making this. I have been working on a "stock" painting too, of Shetland-model boats drawn up near Burravoe pier, on the Shetland island of Yell. There are other landscape features in the mid-and background parts of this work, and I have completed most of these.

A British ex-pat, now resident in France, was in touch regarding the possible purchase of some of my website paintings. However, despite several phone calls between this chap and me, something definite has yet to materialise from this. I still live in hope, as it's nice to sell paintings "ex-stock" now and again.

I picked up a small but interesting commission, from an old school friend, while I was away on the mainland the other weekend. This is a painting of one of the ships on which his grandfather served as crewman, the SS "Clermiston", but there is no deadline on this work, so I will "clear my feet" of more urgent jobs before tackling this one. This also applies to a November-deadlined nautical commission, of the P & O ferry "St. Clair" (IV) coming out of Aberdeen harbour, with Girdleness lighthouse in the background.

The largest commission I have yet to undertake came my way a fortnight ago, and this has already been attended with difficulties. The size of this work is 50" x 40", so I had to order a stretched canvas for this, from one of my mainland suppliers. When it arrived last week, there was a tear, about 1.5" long, near one of the corners of the stretcher frame, which had obviously been the point of impact of a blow during transit. The canvas had been wrapped in only one layer of cardboard, which is completely inadequate for the purpose of sending by post or carrier. I well remember the exertions I had to put into claiming compensation from Royal Mail for a painting which had arrived in Anglesey with a hole through it, a few years ago. Of course, on this occasion, I had to replace the tall ships-themed painting with another similar work, adding another month's work to my bill! The lesson learned from this painful experience was to use polystyrene sheeting AND bubblewrap to protect work from damage by careless and busy delivery-men. The little bit of extra effort saves a great deal of potential time and trouble. But I digress.

The firm who sent the canvas were very good about making reparation, sending me another canvas (which has yet to arrive) and requiring only photographic evidence of the damage to support my claim for replacement. I supplied them with this immediately on request. They don't want the damaged item returned to them, which was a relief, as getting a package as large as that to a point of despatch was a logistical problem for me. Nevertheless, I'm stuck with a large, slightly damaged canvas, on premises in which space is already at a premium! Anyone want it for painting stage scenery, or something? If so, just get in touch and arrange to collect it, and it's yours - free!

I gave myself until the end of July to complete this painting, and I've already lost a fortnight of this. It is of a sailing ship heeling over in strong winds, and it is for what appears to be a potentially valuable client in Cheshire, so I hope I can still make this particular deadline. To misquote the call centre operative, and out of context too, "this job is important to me!"

There have been hints of further commissons too, so "easel-time" on stock works looks like being limited over the coming few months. It is just as well, therefore, that my next booked exhibition remains that which is scheduled for the Creel Inn, Catterline in November and December of 2011. By that time, Shetland will have had its second stint as host for the Tall Ships Race, and my 63rd birthday will be a fairly distant memory. Now and then, I wish that the passage of time had a brake attached to it somewhere!

The website upgrade is still a work in progess too. I would like to get a new look to the "moveable information" layout on the Home page, and my web designer and I will have to apply our joint best efforts on this soon. I haven't updated the information on this page for ages, and this cannot be good for my online search prospects, so I hope to have better news on this in the very near future.

And there ends the latest bulletin from the Tait Gallery. Have a nice week!

ARTWORK, LINKS AND SALES

One of my regular clients bought the painting of Boyndie Bay (above) this week. I spent some time last night and this morning wrapping the picture, ready for its journey to Surrey, which begins tomorrow morning. At the same time, I'll also be dispatching a print to the Argyll region. These things all help to pay the bills, and keep my self-employment as an artist ticking over. This is also helped by my occasional commissions, and I have been working on two of these this week. On Friday, word came by email of another possible commission, this time of a multiple portrait, which is rather an exciting project. This, however, is in the early stages of negotiation, and may yet come to nought - I'll keep you posted on developments.

I finished work on the new Links page of the website, http://www.tait-gallery.co.uk/, this week, and this is going to be followed by many more new features, taking many hours of work to realise. My next task is to finish compiling the product database for the new e-commerce system, which should be up and running within the next month or so. On the subject of admin work, I have yet to start on my accounts for 2009/10, a job which I will have to make time for very soon. So much work, so little time....