Friday 10th April

This weeks blog will unfortunately short.

We've been ill. Natasha was ill over the weekend and I started on Monday. We probably caught something from the people hacking and coughing on the air-conditioned plane! I hate being ill. It has been a lovely week here with plenty of sunshine, even if it's been a bit nippy. There are things I could be doing but when I'm ill I'm pretty useless. Natasha went back to work on Tuesday but I just cabbaged all day Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday!

The only thing I managed to do was to add some more watercolour sketches to my Caribbean trip. As with all our trips I like to do a record in sketches to go with any photos we might take. I then tend to put them in some sort of album as a record. I sometimes add other bits like tickets or in this case our "Death in Paradise" wristbands plus the daily information sheets provided for each day on the ship etc. I filled an A5 sketchbook on holiday and I have painted some more from my photographs to fill in some gaps. I could carry on with this process but it is easy to lose the authenticity of painting during the experience, no matter how good or bad the contemporary sketches are. 

Looking back over some previous albums like our NC500 trip and our Orkney trip, some of the watercolours are dreadful as works of art but they all remind me of the places we have been and in the end aren't for public consumption. 

I am a bit in limbo at the moment with all my galleries supplied with relatively new stuff. Beckstones sold 4 paintings whilst I was away. I also sold 3 paintings from my new "Spring" Buckinghams collection and Tallantyre have finally got my new work on their website. The house move is at the annoying early stages but I need to start sorting my studio out as it is going to happen. It's a good time to do it with no urgent painting projects imminent. This week would have been ideal but feeling shit has prevented that. Hopefully next week I can be useful again!