Friday 6th February

It's been one of those weeks.

I started by varnishing my Buckinghams 'Woodland " Paintings twice. As there were 12 of them my studio was out of commission covered with drying paintings. 

Later I named them all, signed and photographed them and packed them up securely with foam edges, cling wrap and parcel tape. I have arranged a collection for Monday. I will look forward to seeing them framed up and on the Buckinghams website for their Spring Launch in March. It's then cross my fingers time.

With Luna in Doggy Daycare on Tuesday I was able to indulge myself and after swapping my studio over from acrylic set up to oils I spent the day on a large (120cm × 80cm) oil painting of a view towards Rothbury with the Cheviot Hills purple with heather and bracken. To be honest, I found it a bit of a struggle and I'm not totally happy with it. I found painting a distant village in a large landscape tricky. It had to be credible and fairly convincing but it was fairly distant and couldn't be shown in any detail. I fiddled with it on Thursday and am a bit happier now. I will probably revisit it next week.

I also managed to get the edges painted on my 2 commission paintings for the Beckstones customer. I then varnished them twice. After finishing them off I will pack them to post as its not practical for us to get over to The Lakes at the moment to take just 2 paintings. One "Fell Foot Farm, Little Langdale" is shown at the beginning of this blog.

I'm taking my exhibition paintings over to Gallery 45 today (Friday) for the "Wild Northumberland " Exhibition starting on Saturday and running till April 2nd.

Weeks like this can be a bit frustrating but as I've explained before, it's all part of the lifestyle.

As a rare treat, we're off to Newcastle Cathedral tonight (Thursday) to see Pink Floyd by Candlelight.