There's a nice little park not far from where I live called Cathays Park. I saw this woman laying under this tree, which I think may be a pear tree. I thought it summed up what was a nice day in the Park.
This is a painting of an aubergine, or egg fruit (as I think they may be called in the US) which I bought in the supermarket in order to paint and then eat. I think aubergines are a beautiful fruit, at least to look at. However having tried to eat this aubergine after I painted it, I can't say I'm a big aubergine fan.
Sadly my old Olympus 960z (1.3mp) digital camera stated to play up the other week, so I decided it was about time I invested in a new digital camera. Well I had a look on eBay and saw this wondrous 7 mega pixel Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX07 with a Leica lens no less going for £109 and fell in love strait away. It really is super little camera. Small, made of real metal and takes the most amazingly sharp images, pictures that would put my now vintage Pentax MX 35mm SLR to shame, not only that it's easier to use and is about the size of a packet of 20 cigarettes, it also does amazingly good digital video.
Well to continue the Penarth theme. Here is another painting I did from my trip to Penarth. The view is from the part of the beach to the left of the pier, looking kind of South east more or less across the mouth of the river Taff and the entrance to Cardiff Bay. Incidentally a friend of mine took some pictures from this spot on her mobile phone. I said that's an amazing picture, it looks like you were walking on the water. Well I listen to enough Coast to Coast shows to believe walking on the water may actually be possible. However as I found when I visited the spot myself it's a lot easier to "walk on the water" when one has a nice concrete jetty beneath one's feet :)
Penarth is a little seaside town outside Cardiff and is actually quite a nice place. It has some interesting urban architecture, a peir and a pebble beach. It's not Monte Carlo, but it certainly a nice place to go to be near the sea for a few hours and enjoy the atmosphere. Oddly enough however one of the first things one sees after stepping off the train and making in the general direction of the sea front is this Travel Agent's shop, Penarth Travel. Which perhaps doesn't bode so well if you consider it's telling you you might want to go escape to somewhere else. I love the way they had all these colour posters in the Window and the poster of a sun tanned woman hiding her breasts to give it all a touch of page 3 glamour.
This is a painting of a punnet of cherry tomatoes I bought last week and decided to paint. I suppose they are rather large as cherry tomatoes go but they really were this size. I dare say giant cherry tomatoes would kind of defeat the object. Perhaps they need to use a sieve with smaller holes. :)
This is a painting of a strange looking fruit I bought in my local supermarket (a branch of Lidl) where I got the impression, although I now wonder perhaps mistaken, that it was called an "Exotic Susan". However after doing an Internet search and finding no examples of any fruits called "Exotic Susan" and wondering if I had painted and subsequently eaten the Worlds only example of a fruit called Exotic Susan. Well to cut a long story short I eventually identified it as a Persimmon. Actually I think I prefer the title "A fruit called Exotic Susan".
Actually I have to admit these aren't really genuine Ray Bans but rather some Ray Ban style sunglasses I bought quite cheap some years ago. But then Rene Magritte didn't paint pipes so they can be "real" Ray Bans if I say they are. This is art and all things are possible in art, the Sun might even come out. :) This painting is 5ins x 7ins and painted oil on board (Masonite). The glasses are a little bit larger than life in the painting, which makes the sunglasses look a bit like they belong to a god or godess. Of course this doesn't come over in the photographs because unlike original paintings, photographs have no scale, so tend to work differently than paintings.
I bought three flat pack cupboards from Lidl the other month. Actually I bought them and constructed them over the course of a number of days, mainly because I could only strap one at a time to my bicycle. When I was finished there were these two screws left over. This means statistically I got 2/3 = 0.666 of a spare screw in each pack, this is of course a human number being due to human error, but better to have too many parts since it would be a beast to have too few. Well these screws were left laying on my windowsill for some time so I thought I may as well paint them. :)
I think this glass originally came in a set of 6 which my parents bought some time in the 1970s. I believe it may be the last one left. This is my favourite glass at the moment. I normally drink red grape juice in it, but thought it would look good as a glass of water for a painting. Actually I have loads of glasses because I used to collect Nutella chocolate spread jars. But it got to the point when I had more glasses than a small pub and had to find people I could give them away to :)
This was a display in the window of one of the Local Army and Navy stores, which I thought would make an interesting painting. It's painted 6ins x 4ins oil on board.
This is the avocado I bought to paint last week. I'd never bought an avocado before, well I suppose I must have had it in things in the past, but I didn't know what to expect. It was more brown by the time I cut it open and the inside was soft smooth and buttery. Not a lot of taste on it's own so I opened a tin of Sardines and ate the sardines along with the avocado contents cut into slices. This combination was quite nice. Apparently some people eat them with Soy sauce and they seem to be nice with something a bit salty. I might buy one again I dare say there are various ways of eating an Avocado.
Now available as a Greetings Card through Cafepress. Click in card picture or the link below.
This is what I did to one of those peaches before eating it, it was very tasty to :) This painting is 4ins x 6ins and is painted oil on gessoed board.
When I did my weekly shopping last week I decided to buy some fruit to paint so I bought two peaches and an Avocado pear, that almost sounds like a Christmas song. :) These are the two peaches I bought, I have since eaten them, but here they are immortalised in paint. This painting is 4ins x 6ins and is painted oil on gessoed board.
I was going to do some painting today and might still do a bit before bedtime. However I decided that I could put some of these paintings I'm doing on a variety of products on Cafepress. So made a start with the "Spring in the Woods" painting which I put up the other day. So an image of this painting is now available on variety of products including prints, mugs, greetings cards, calanders, badges, fridge magnets and even a mouse mat. :) The new shop is at
I seem to have a bit of a passion for old Cameras. I bought this 1957 Mk IV Ihagee Exa on eBay intending to resell it on another antiques and collectables site. But I just fell in love with it and couldn't bring myself to part with it. So I thought it would do a painting of it instead :) I can sort of imagine the artist Edward Hopper having a camera like this so I kind of painted it a Hopper like style imagining it sitting on a hotel table. The painting is 4ins x 6ins and is painted oil on board.
A badge design based on this painting is now available on Cafepress at: http://www.cafepress.com/exacamera
