Green Apples, 6 ins x 4.5ins Oil on board

This is a little still-life of some green apples which I did the other week. I quite like the storks on these apples, and the way they kind of stick out in different directions according to the way they were hanging on the tree.

River Stones (2) 6ins x 4.5ins Oil on board

This is another painting of river stones on the banks of the River Taff in Bute Park Cardiff. Actually I did this painting a day before the one I uploaded yesterday so technically it should be River Stones (1) but numbering paintings like that can get confusing, so maybe I should give them all the same title and think of them as a series.

River Stones 6ins x 4.5ins Oil on board

This is a painting of some river stones I found on the bank of the River Taff, a natural rock garden. I like painting these kind of subjects, although the stones have fallen together by a seeming randomness you do get quite an interesting natural order.

Reading in the Park. 6ins x 4.5ins Oil on Board

I saw this woman reading in the park back in the summer. I don't know what she was reading but it was obviously quite a good book she didn't notice me at all.

Actually I've never been big on reading outdoors myself, I often find the white paper hurts my eyes in the sun, I get distracted by something, or I feel I should be doing something else, so my attention span outdoors is fairly short. Actually I also took a lot of photographs of flowers on the same day as I saw this woman reading and wondered whether I had been a honey bee in a former life. :)

Trees in Autumn. 6ins x 4.5ins Oil on board

This is a painting of some tree trunks near the the entrance to Bute park at just after 4 pm on an October afternoon. This was about the last of the sun I got that day.

Actually I was going to go to the park today, because the sun was out earlier in the afternoon then it clouded over and is quite dull now. Well I wanted to take some photographs of all the autumn leaves, but they don't look so vivid when the sun goes in. Well I guess the sun is going to be a bit elusive here for the next 6 months.

Taxi! 4.5ins x 6ins Oil on Board

This is a painting of a fairly typical black and white Cardiff taxi coming around the corner at about 10pm, near where I live on Salisbury Road, Cardiff. An abondoned beer can sits on the pavement.

Red, Yellow and Green Peppers 4.5ins x 6ins Oil on Board

I have been trying to paint more exotic fruits or vegetables but I had kind of forgotten peppers. Probably because I don't really consider them particularly exotic. In saying that there was a time when I was a child when they didn't seem to be readily available. Mind my parents were brought up in the war so probably didn't know what they were. Actually they do look interesting as fruits go. I often like some slices of peppers in my melted cheese and Salami toasted sandwiches. Makes it taste like Pizza. Yum :)

How Cool is Cool? Oil on Board 4.5ins x 6ins

I saw this girl crossing the road late one sunny Sunday afternoon just as the sun was casting long shadows down the road. I thought she just looked so cool even her shadow is cool. I bet she drinks that soda without even getting her lips wet. :)

Evening on Eastern Avenue 4.5ins x 6ins Oil on board

Went to a Classic motorbike show in Ponthir with a friend last week, then afterwards we went to see my Mother in Cwmbran. On the way back I took some pictures and some video out the window whilst travelling into Cardiff on Eastern Avenue. The car is a 1979 Volvo so is also a bit of a classic I wasn't driving it at the time I might add :) Actually there seemed to be a lot of braking going on at this spot and later noticed the white van on the bridge, possibly a speed trap. :)

Vine Ripened Tomatos 6ins x 4.5ins Oil on board

I actually did this paint a couple of weeks ago now. However I have been busy scanning some of my older paintings as high resolution images and uploaded them to my Zazzle.com gallery so I haven't had so much opportunity to paint.

Featured Product at Zazzle: Mythical Willow Pattern Card

Well I just had another one of my products awarded with a Todays Best Award on Zazzle.com I seem to be making a habbit of this :) Saying that I do have a small folio of designs which I originally did for greetings cards etc so I've been going through that and uploading the best designs.

I also uploaded this car design called VROOM!! Which I suppose is somewhat reminiscent of Roy Lichtenstein. The car design is something I made up I kind of based it on a 57 Chevy, but kind of crossed with a Ford Anglia, though there is a little bit of red Corvette thrown in for good measure :)

I wish they still made cars with fins, perhaps I should get in touch with Volkswagon and get this made up :)

Featured Product at Zazzle: Herd of Elephants Postage

I just got a message from the people at Zazzle telling me this custom postage stamp "Herd of Elephants Postage" which I created today with one of my paintings has been awarded as one of today's best designs :) Which means it will be featured on the today's best page and appear in the featured products as one of the best on Zazzle :)

I do like doing designs for these custom stamps. It's a pity there isn't a UK version though. However I also have this picture available as a greetings card.

It can be seen on Zazzle.com here: Herd of Elephants Postage

Simon the Cat. 5¾ ins x 6¼ ins, Oil on Acetate.

I did this little painting quite some years ago now. Simon was a cat we owned back in the 1980s along with another cat called Jasper. Unfortunately Simon became very ill and had to be put down. We don't know what happened really there wasn't any marks on him to show he had been in any sort of accident but the vet said it looked like he had been either crushed or maybe someone had kicked him :( It was very sad to lose him like that. our other cat Jasper also missed him to, they were very close and I suppose he must have wondered where Simon had gone.

I originally started this painting just wanting to paint a cat, but it ended up as a portrait of Simon. I think I did this painting to have something to remember him in happier times, wide eyed and bushy tailed and perhaps still stalking the birds in kitty Heaven. :) But I do kind of think cats are immortal and sometimes an aspect of immortality seems to exist in my own paintings, at least to me, fooled by my own art, perhaps? But I suppose it's like a memory made flesh and maybe that is all we are at the end of the day.

Smoking Robot on Mars. 18ins x 14ins, Acrylic on Canvas

This is another painting that I did a while back, 2004 to be precise, so not quite so early as yesterday's painting, but a few years old. I went though a bit of a phase of being interested in retro toy robots and even bought one on eBay which I have an an ornament in my living room. This is a painting of the classic "Smoking Robot" which I put in an imaginary Martian landscape . Of course we now know the sky is actually blue on Mars, but even NASA have been known to practice a bit of artistic licence, they call it science LOL. But a bright red sky does look quite striking I think.

Actually the reason I put this painting up today is because I have just made a high resolution image of it, which is now available as a print from Zazzle.com It can a purchased as a full size print as a small poster (which is quite reasonable in price) or you can also have it printed on canvas and framed in your choice of frame.

Actually I think it looks rather nice in a simple wooden frame and probably doesn't need an inner mount (matting) Bearing in mind the original is on stretched canvas. But it also looks nice with a white mount. Though obviously the more one adds the more pricey it gets :)

The Dolphin and the Crab were Friends

I did this painting as an illustration for a children's book around 1992. Being intended as an illustration it was painted on clear acetate over a pencil sketch, which proves layers were not invented by Adobe. :)

Well it's bit different than my usual work, but I thought I'd put it in my daily painting blog since it's interesting to put something different in, and because I haven't been doing quite so many paintings lately because I have been busy making some of my designs, illustrations and paintings available on various products including Posters, framed prints, greetings cards on a new custom products site called Zazzle.com

So that's another reason why I hunted out this illustration. I thought it would make a nice greetings card So I have made it available both as a greetings card and as a small print

The picture on the left is how it might look as a framed print. Although there are millions of other ways to frame it. :)