We didn't quite get the website upgrade ready yesterday, as there were too many things to sort out, but my web designer and I put in some good work on it. More will be done today, and I still hope to be up and running with it by the weekend. It'll be worth the wait, I promise you......
www.tait-gallery.co.uk
The Grumpy Old Artist
Would YOU pose for this man???
Exhibition Poster
Catterline Event, 2011
Oil Painting by Jim Tait
Helford River, Cornwall
Oil Painting by Jim Tait
Full-riggers "Georg Stage" and "Danmark"
Other Recent Works
Fordyce Castle and Village
Hay's Dock, Lerwick
Shetland-model Boats at Burravoe, Yell
Tall Ships Seascape
The Tour Boat "Dunter III", with Gannets, off Noss
The "Karen Ann II" entering Fraserburgh harbour
Summer Evening, Boyndie Bay
1930s Lerwick Harbour
Johnshaven Harbour
"Seabourn Legend"
Greeting Cards!
Now Available in Packs of Five or in Assorted Sets of Four
Showing posts with label website. Show all posts
Showing posts with label website. Show all posts
Thursday, 2 September 2010
Sunday, 28 March 2010
ARTWORK, WEBSITE WORK AND A TRIP AWAY
It's nice to be able to have new paintings to show you (above). One is a commissioned work of the tour boat "Dunter III" at one of her regular destinations, the cliffs of Noss, which is one of the largest seabird colonies in Britain. It was featured in the recent BBC production of "Simon King in Shetland". The other painting is a "stock" work which I've entitled "Tall Ships Seascape", which features, strange to relate, tall ships at sea! A second completed commission, of Lerwick's south end, slipped through the net as regards getting it photographed for representation here. My clients seemed well satisfied with my efforts - you'll have to take my word for it!
Two more commissions came my way this week, so I'll be starting on these shortly. In the meantime, I've been putting more work into another stock work featuring tall ships - I hope to have this as a feature on this blog within the next fortnight.
In view of the fact that I have no mainland exhibitions booked for this year, and, taking into account that I have concession travel vouchers to use from April onwards, I have decided to take a trip to the mainland at the end of next month. So I made the necessary bookings, including a night's stay at one of Aberdeen's Premier Inns. This is a totally unnecessary extravagance, and will be a new experience for me, as I've never stayed in one of these establishments before. Watch this space at the end of April for a Michelin Guide-style report on it! I was pleasantly surprised when I heard how much my ferry fares were costing - being over 60 definitely has its compensations!
My friend, business adviser and web designer, Igor Mournly, paid me one of his regular visits on Monday afternoon, and quickly dispelled any illusions which I may have harboured about life getting easier in the near future. The website upgrade is going to take an awful lot more work over the coming weeks and months. He was showing me how to go about creating a proper archive page to contain images of previously sold works and fulfilled commissions, and I was frantically taking notes on the procedures involved. These involve large images AND thumbnails, along with internal links between them, and I am not a little proud to say that I have since completed the "Commissions" archive, which is now "live", largely by accident - I just forgot to "hide" it. After further consultation, we decided to leave it as it was. It can be seen at
http://www.tait-gallery.co.uk/Commissions.aspx
Your opinion, as always in such matters, would be valuable - let me know what you think. You can click on each image on the main page to get larger images. Now I have another archive to create, this time of other non-commissioned "sold" works - and it's bigger than than the "Commissions" one. I'm really looking forward to a time when all this - the product database, "basket" and "checkout" functions, and narrative sections, as well as the parts already described - is ready to "go public".
A north-easterly gale is sweeping the islands as I work towards getting this post done. Altogether, it has been a fairly satisfactory week from the point of view of productiveness. My family are keeping well, which is even more important to me, and I hope for more of the same in both categories during the seven days to come. I hope it's the same for you!
Two more commissions came my way this week, so I'll be starting on these shortly. In the meantime, I've been putting more work into another stock work featuring tall ships - I hope to have this as a feature on this blog within the next fortnight.
In view of the fact that I have no mainland exhibitions booked for this year, and, taking into account that I have concession travel vouchers to use from April onwards, I have decided to take a trip to the mainland at the end of next month. So I made the necessary bookings, including a night's stay at one of Aberdeen's Premier Inns. This is a totally unnecessary extravagance, and will be a new experience for me, as I've never stayed in one of these establishments before. Watch this space at the end of April for a Michelin Guide-style report on it! I was pleasantly surprised when I heard how much my ferry fares were costing - being over 60 definitely has its compensations!
My friend, business adviser and web designer, Igor Mournly, paid me one of his regular visits on Monday afternoon, and quickly dispelled any illusions which I may have harboured about life getting easier in the near future. The website upgrade is going to take an awful lot more work over the coming weeks and months. He was showing me how to go about creating a proper archive page to contain images of previously sold works and fulfilled commissions, and I was frantically taking notes on the procedures involved. These involve large images AND thumbnails, along with internal links between them, and I am not a little proud to say that I have since completed the "Commissions" archive, which is now "live", largely by accident - I just forgot to "hide" it. After further consultation, we decided to leave it as it was. It can be seen at
http://www.tait-gallery.co.uk/Commissions.aspx
Your opinion, as always in such matters, would be valuable - let me know what you think. You can click on each image on the main page to get larger images. Now I have another archive to create, this time of other non-commissioned "sold" works - and it's bigger than than the "Commissions" one. I'm really looking forward to a time when all this - the product database, "basket" and "checkout" functions, and narrative sections, as well as the parts already described - is ready to "go public".
A north-easterly gale is sweeping the islands as I work towards getting this post done. Altogether, it has been a fairly satisfactory week from the point of view of productiveness. My family are keeping well, which is even more important to me, and I hope for more of the same in both categories during the seven days to come. I hope it's the same for you!
Sunday, 21 March 2010
MY WEEK AT'S AWA'
On Monday morning I posted a couple of prints to a customer in Stirling. Then, being struck with my conscience over my lack of adherence to any kind of exercise programme, I walked home via Mounthooly Street, which any Lerwegian will tell you is a fairly steep climb up from the main shopping thoroughfare. I then finished, bar snagging, the second of the commissioned paintings which have been preoccupying me for the past six weeks or so, had lunch and set off with the first of these works to the framer. I then walked north along Commercial Street and Commercial Road, then up King Harald Street to Union Street. My legs, which have never regained their full capacity since a knee operation more than two years ago, before which I was unable to walk at all for eighteen months, told me that this was quite enough of this kind of exercise for one day, so I gave them a rest. In the evening I paid my subscription online to Re-title.com, one of the online galleries in which I have a small display, but I had some difficulty with the uploading procedure, so I abandoned the project in rather a bad humour - something for another day.
On Tuesday, I decided that the second commissioned work would benefit from the presence of a few seagulls, so I duly applied these, a risky venture, as many of my seagulls have ended up looking like distant Vulcan bombers, which rather spoils the ambience of the tranquil scene which I have been trying to portray. In this case, the birds (I hope) added to, rather than detracted from, the quality of the picture. In the afternoon, I finished a long-procrastinated-over task, the alteration of the bow and bow-wave of a fishing-boat in a previously-commissioned work which had been returned for after-sales service. In the evening I tried again to upload work on the Re-title gallery, but the system defeated me again. I abandoned it in a foul temper, and turned to another online presence of mine, Galleries-Online, and started to update this.
On Wednesday, I returned to my long-neglected stock works, and one of two paintings featuring tall ships in particular. I picked the one which shows most promise, one which portrays (or will) several distant sailing vessels against a background of bright sunbeams piercing a light cloud cover and a fairly rough sea. It will be, I hope, an atmospheric work but, at the end of the day, I still hadn't resolved the light issues in it. This will come - I'm not concerned about it at the moment. In the evening, I worked on the "archive" pages of the new-look website, which I'm looking forward to having "live" for your delectation soon.
On Thursday I resolved the light problem which had been affecting my tall ships work the day before. I should have this painting finished this incoming week, in which case I'll upload it to my blog and website - it'll be the first new non-commissioned work for some months. I made a pot of soup for myself and my sister Mary, who has just returned unbloodied from a skiing holiday in the French Alps. Afterwards she gave me a lift downtown with the second of the commissioned works, which I took to the framers, getting back the one I put there on Monday. It now has attractive brown and gold moulding around it, with which I am well satsified. The evening was spent on necessary domestic tasks and phoning people.
Friday is always mother's day for me, so I spent most of it at Whiteness. The weather was inclement - a severe gale, gusting up to 70mph, was driving heavy rain over the islands, but it didn't have much bearing on what I was doing. This consisted of collecting shopping and pension, checking out the greenhouse, making coffee and tea, cooking lunch, washing up afterwards, and helping mother in any way I could with sundry little tasks around the house. She's well, but having trouble with her hearing aids, both of which have packed in - again. When my older sister and my niece came to visit, around lunchtime, we all made the most of the communication problems in our usual whimsical manner! I returned home just before tea-time, and did little else for the rest of the evening - I usually feel fairly knackered on Friday evenings!
On Saturday, I received the dates for my next Creel Inn (Catterline) exhibition - November/December 2011!. This means that, as things stand, I have no shows confirmed for this year or most of the next. However, I will use this as an opportunity to build my stock of local scenes for the next few months, then concentrate on getting some really good paintings done for the mainland event, so that I can cherry-pick the best works for display in the Mearns venue.
Meantime, I did some more work on the tall ships painting until the late afternoon, when I had to pick up a prescription from the chemist's before they closed for the rest of the weekend. I then headed for the Lounge for my first alcoholic beverage consumption of the week. This consisted of two pints of lager, followed by a visit to the Chinese takeaway on my way home. What a dirty little stopout I'm turning out to be!
I watched Scotland narrowly beating Ireland at the six nations rugby. After that, I watched a few other things on the box, and did not a lot else.
Today, I'm doing lots of domestic things like changing beds, washing clothes, drying clothes and cooking, as well as getting my blog, hopefully, sufficiently well posted to make it worthy of your reading it. My customer for the first commissioned work called just after lunchtime, collected his painting, with which he seems well pleased, and gave me some money - altogether a very satisfactory way for things to be done.
And that, dear friends, is the story of my week at's awa'. I hope that the incoming seven days is full of good and interesting things for you.
On Tuesday, I decided that the second commissioned work would benefit from the presence of a few seagulls, so I duly applied these, a risky venture, as many of my seagulls have ended up looking like distant Vulcan bombers, which rather spoils the ambience of the tranquil scene which I have been trying to portray. In this case, the birds (I hope) added to, rather than detracted from, the quality of the picture. In the afternoon, I finished a long-procrastinated-over task, the alteration of the bow and bow-wave of a fishing-boat in a previously-commissioned work which had been returned for after-sales service. In the evening I tried again to upload work on the Re-title gallery, but the system defeated me again. I abandoned it in a foul temper, and turned to another online presence of mine, Galleries-Online, and started to update this.
On Wednesday, I returned to my long-neglected stock works, and one of two paintings featuring tall ships in particular. I picked the one which shows most promise, one which portrays (or will) several distant sailing vessels against a background of bright sunbeams piercing a light cloud cover and a fairly rough sea. It will be, I hope, an atmospheric work but, at the end of the day, I still hadn't resolved the light issues in it. This will come - I'm not concerned about it at the moment. In the evening, I worked on the "archive" pages of the new-look website, which I'm looking forward to having "live" for your delectation soon.
On Thursday I resolved the light problem which had been affecting my tall ships work the day before. I should have this painting finished this incoming week, in which case I'll upload it to my blog and website - it'll be the first new non-commissioned work for some months. I made a pot of soup for myself and my sister Mary, who has just returned unbloodied from a skiing holiday in the French Alps. Afterwards she gave me a lift downtown with the second of the commissioned works, which I took to the framers, getting back the one I put there on Monday. It now has attractive brown and gold moulding around it, with which I am well satsified. The evening was spent on necessary domestic tasks and phoning people.
Friday is always mother's day for me, so I spent most of it at Whiteness. The weather was inclement - a severe gale, gusting up to 70mph, was driving heavy rain over the islands, but it didn't have much bearing on what I was doing. This consisted of collecting shopping and pension, checking out the greenhouse, making coffee and tea, cooking lunch, washing up afterwards, and helping mother in any way I could with sundry little tasks around the house. She's well, but having trouble with her hearing aids, both of which have packed in - again. When my older sister and my niece came to visit, around lunchtime, we all made the most of the communication problems in our usual whimsical manner! I returned home just before tea-time, and did little else for the rest of the evening - I usually feel fairly knackered on Friday evenings!
On Saturday, I received the dates for my next Creel Inn (Catterline) exhibition - November/December 2011!. This means that, as things stand, I have no shows confirmed for this year or most of the next. However, I will use this as an opportunity to build my stock of local scenes for the next few months, then concentrate on getting some really good paintings done for the mainland event, so that I can cherry-pick the best works for display in the Mearns venue.
Meantime, I did some more work on the tall ships painting until the late afternoon, when I had to pick up a prescription from the chemist's before they closed for the rest of the weekend. I then headed for the Lounge for my first alcoholic beverage consumption of the week. This consisted of two pints of lager, followed by a visit to the Chinese takeaway on my way home. What a dirty little stopout I'm turning out to be!
I watched Scotland narrowly beating Ireland at the six nations rugby. After that, I watched a few other things on the box, and did not a lot else.
Today, I'm doing lots of domestic things like changing beds, washing clothes, drying clothes and cooking, as well as getting my blog, hopefully, sufficiently well posted to make it worthy of your reading it. My customer for the first commissioned work called just after lunchtime, collected his painting, with which he seems well pleased, and gave me some money - altogether a very satisfactory way for things to be done.
And that, dear friends, is the story of my week at's awa'. I hope that the incoming seven days is full of good and interesting things for you.
Sunday, 14 February 2010
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....
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....
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