Boathouse by moonlight

I finished the oil painting of the Boathouse in moonlight today. In the meantime Alex has been struggling with a large frame.
This afternoon Alex is off to Cardiff with one of our daughters to take one of the grandchildren to see the X factor Road Show. The last time we went to see anyone in Cardiff it was Alison Moyet in St David's Hall. She was terrific and obviously had a large following.
I remember one moonlight evening in Welshpool. It was approaching Christmas and at that time of year it was common for gangs to steal a lorry load of Christmas Trees overnight from the plantations around there.
It may seem hard to believe but in those days we were quite interested in either preventing crime or catching criminals. Every night part of the duties would be to go around every "lock up", vulnerable premises on the area, (shops garages etc) and physically check doors windows for any sign of a break in. If one was discovered the following morning you could guarantee being called out of bed to explain why you hadn't discovered it.
Anyway Mike and I were parked amongst a host of Christmas trees. It was quite eerie in the moonlight with  cold  mist swirling around us. In order to hear any sounds we had the windows down. Occasionally we heard muffled sounds and movement in the trees which on investigation turned out to be no more than an odd animal. All of a sudden we were shaken by a thundering noise coming right at us. We looked at each other with some misapprehension. I reached for the door handle and felt for my truncheon.With that from out of the mist a white horse appeared galloping towards our panda. It reared up and wheeled off disappearing into the trees. God knows where the horse had come from but my heart was beating louder than the horses hoof beats.
When it had gone we looked nonchalantly at each other and decided it was time to go and check the lock ups in town.

Druidstone

I finished the painting of Druidstone above yesterday. It is a smaller version of a painting I did last year.
I started a painting of the Towy Valley at Dawn this morning after taking the dog out.

 I then went with Alex to take two of the grand children for lunch and then the cinema to see "Pirates". It must be 7 or 8 years since I last went to the cinema and that was when we took another grandchild to see "Finding Nemo" something to do with a fish if I remember correctly. The first time I remember going to the pictures as it was called then was on a Saturday morning and I believe it was sixpence to get in.That was to  to see "Summer Holiday" with Cliff Richard. I suppose it is no surprise I haven't been to the cinema a lot after that.

I remember us taking two of our children to see " ET " in Newtown. At the start of the film it went dark and very quiet as the opening scene came on. The scene was of a rabbit playing in a field.
At that point our daughter said in a very loud and posh little voice,"I see mommy ET is a rabbit." This brought the whole cinema down in fits of laughter. It has also become something of a catch phrase in out household.

Actually "Pirates" wasn't too bad, a darn sight better than "Summer Holiday" anyway.

Commission

The painting above of Llansteffan sold last week.

I was painting yesterday when Alex called me and said there was a man on the phone who was interested in a commission.

I got to the phone brush in hand. The man “Timothy”, told me he had seen my website and was very impressed. He wanted a portrait done of his wife.Would I be interested? I told him I no longer did portraits for the public. (At one time I had a website purely for portraits and concentrated on that aspect of painting).

He was most insistent like a double-glazing salesman. The conversation went on a while and I politely tried to explain that  no I didn’t want the commission. I then twigged. It was April the first and my son had caught me out. He was in fits.

Today I am starting a new painting and Alex is making cards.

Schools Out

The sketch above is one I did of a farmer checking his cattle. At one point he seemed a little stressed out as I watched. He wanted to separate one of the cows and spent some time ushering her away from the herd at which point his collie dog leaped from the back of the pick up and started to herd the cow back to the rest of its companions much to the fury of the farmer who was now chasing the dog and the cow. Life can be a bit frustrating like that.

I walked into my studio today and found Jac had been sick in there. I trust it wasn't a response to my latest painting.

We met the Mr Williams headmaster of the Welsh Secondary School in Carmarthen yesterday. He was a real gentleman. I was thinking that the school had just recovered from our children passing through its portals and now it has to brace itself for the next generation as our grandchildren will soon be gracing its classrooms.

It is actually a first rate school and has a fine reputation. It has also produced more that its fair share of great rugby players including, Steven Jones, Rhys Priestland, Ken Owens and his sister Vicky. The previous headmaster Mr Evans always talks about our children when we meet him. They must have made some sort of impression you would think, having so many thousand children go through the school yet he can remember them vividly.

I have been touching up a couple of paintings this morning we are off later to Aberglasney for lunch.

PS "Clive have a happy birthday tomorrow!"

David Cowdry

We went the Private View of David Cowdry's Exhibition at Aberglasney last night. Usual brilliant work.
The Exhibition is only on for a week so if you what to see it get down there. You have to pay admission to the gardens  but the exhibtion is free. There were queues to buy his work last night. I even own one of his works myself.
In my view probably the best artist in West Wales certainly for wildlife.The picture above is one of his works of a razorbill diving under water.

Boer War Memorial

The watercolour above is another version of Guildhall Square Carmarthen with the Boer War Memorial in front of the Court House. My Great Uncle, my grandfather’s brother died in the Boer War. He has his own memorial in Woodstock. Another of my grandfather’s brothers died as a result of mustard gas in the First World War. On the whole my generation has been pretty lucky.

I am still struggling with my CD collection. I have mentioned before that I am trying to move into the digital age. I have spent donkeys “ripping” my CDs to  iTunes. I had asked advice online on how to get them to play through a Home Cinema set up. I had been told its simple. Transfer them to audio file and put them on a USB memory stick.

Great I did that. Unfortunately the LG DVD receiver did not recognise the files! I then had to convert them all to mp3 which took 5 hours.

Success? Well not quite it worked but only the first few albums appeared. It seems like there is a size limit to the number of files the receiver will allow you to input. The manual doesn’t mention this although it does say there is a limit to number of files on a CD or DVD.

I tried LG support live chat – not working

I tried email to them I had an answer but not to the question I asked.

I rang them and was told the system was down whatever that meant

I sent another email no reply

I tried live chat again today – not working

I rang them again today . I was told the system was down.

I said with all the problems they had there was no hope of sorting out mine.

I think I will buy a Dansette record player and go back to vinyl!

Today I am in Origin Gallery.

Last Steam Train

The last commercial steam locomotive services finished in Britain in 1968. I was fortunate enough to have experienced and grown up in the age of steam albeit at the end of that era. I did this impressionistic version of the Last Steam Train today which brought back a lot of memories.

The other day I was fortunate enough to have a good look at a painting by Donald Ayres. He is a traditional painter with a style not unlike mine (although he  may not be thrilled to be compared to me). Donald has moved around but lived for a time in Carmarthenshire in the 1970's and many of his subjects were based on the area.
I provide a link to his website below:
 http://www.ayresfineart.co.uk/