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.

ALMOST THERE!

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

A REALLY GRUMPY OLD ARTIST

Well, really! The BBC came out with some distressing news one evening last week, namely that grumpy old men are between the ages of 35 to 54. How they arrived at this postulation is not clear to me, as they did not explain the reasoning process behind it. However they came to this position, what it means is that I am now old enough to be A GRUMPY OLD MAN'S FATHER!

As if that wasn't distressing enough, the large painting, on which I have put in a summer's labour, failed it's first client inspection, and it is now back on the easel for remedial work. I'm particularly annoyed about this, as I was convinced that I'd made an excellent job of it, and I am not sure exactly what I have to do to make the picture more acceptable to my customer, who, of course, is always right. He reckons that I have not quite got the details of the 18th century American warship (which is the main feature of the painting) correct, and, not being an expert on the navies of this period, I am left without a definite idea as to how to proceed from here. I suppose I'll just fart around with some of the angles and colour fields, and hope that I hit the spot with some of these footerings. And if, on the second presentation in about three week's time, my efforts have again been found wanting, I'm going to have to admit defeat, give the man his deposit back, and put the whole wasted summer down to bitter experience. I don't want to do the artistic equivalent of running on the spot, sit-ups and squat-thrusts for ever - I'm 62 now, my health isn't what it was, and I have other clients waiting.

Not that all the news has been bad this week. I spent most of Sunday morning wrapping the painting of Johnshaven harbour (above) for the journey to its new owner in Cornwall. The same customer has commissioned another work, and I have continued to make progress on the other two commissioned works "on the stocks". These are both looking pretty good now.

My web designer is coming to visit me tomorrow, and the purpose of the call is to make the new website (www.tait-gallery.co.uk) upgrade live. And then what a wonderful new spectacle will unfold before your eyes. One of the problems with the old system was that the sold and unsold works were lumped together. This will change with the new one, I hope from tomorrow, and I also hope that you will visit it. Enjoy the rest of your week!

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, 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!

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.

NO PEEKING...NOT YET!

This week I finished one of the two commissioned paintings which have been taking up most of my easel-time for the last month or so. I hope to complete the other one tomorrow. I'm sorry that I can't put them on display yet, as their prospective owners will have to get first peek!

There are no further commissions in the immediate offing, so I plan to get back to my stock/exhibition works this week. I received new ready-to-use canvases from Jackson's yesterday, with this in mind - I hope to transform them into attractive works of art soon. My supply of off-the-wall paintings is getting rather low, as sales have been surprisingly good in the last few months, considering the financial climate. There are no exhibition dates to tell you about yet - I tried to get in touch with someone about this yesterday, but he was off to Edinburgh for the Scotland-England rugby match. I hope he wasn't disappointed with what he witnessed - maybe I'm biased, but I thought Scotland should have won that game.

I have completed the product database for the website e-commerce upgrade, which should be evident on http://www.tait-gallery.co.uk/ soon. My web designer is now going to help me with the presentation of this. Meanwhile, I have a couple of archive pages to construct, one of past commissioned works and one of other "sold" paintings. These pages might be subdivided, and what format they take will soon become clear, I hope, as I start producing it. The Octeportal system, which supports my website, has its idiosyncracies which can ensnare inexperienced users like me. I've made some dreadful mistakes in the past - fortunately I can contact my web host or designer to dig me out of it whenever that happens. It's a steep learning curve for a 61-year-old online newbie!

Spring is in the air - the crocuses are out here, having emerged heroically from under the retreating snow, and the daffodils will soon follow. The snow has nearly all gone - just a few patches left in the deeper hill-hollows. I celebrated my vernal mood by getting a much-needed haircut on Wednesday, and it's nice to be able to get out for walks again.

I hope there's a spring in your step this week!