Gary Speed

Just a very quick post here about Gary Speed. Film-star looks, Footballer/ football-star, played over 500 premier league games for Newcastle, Bolton and Sheffield; appeared on any number of football analysis programmes, had a beautiful wife, £2 million mansion in Cheshire, had two talented and beautiful sons, Wales football manager who had won 4 out of his last 5 games. Yet he hanged himself in the garage of his mansion last Saturday night.

Commission

My book-keeper, Lisa, has a brother who is married to Mels, and they have had a baby girl called Emily. It looks like I might get commissioned to do more than two paintings, but pictured here is the first sketch of Mels with Emily. This first stage usually takes me about an hour and a half and as you can see it's pretty crude and basic. I like to get the basic structure down and if possible get facial expressions working sooner rather than later. I quite like this stage where with some rough and ready brush strokes you can get the whole composition laid out. If this feels good then I am then encouraged to go in and work on some detail.

I have been commissioned!!!!!

Well blow me down and knock me over with a feather. I have been commissioned to produce two paintings of my book-keepers neice who happens to be the same age as Moo-moo. Lisa was doing my quarterly accounts up-date a few days ago and she came into the piggery and saw some of my stuff on the walls. She was evidently impressed enough with what I had done to immediately ask if I would do not one but two pictures for her. She has shown me some photos already and there are a number with interesting backgrounds and good facial expressions that I would be quite confident to work from. She said that she would either work for me for free until the "fee" was covered, or give me a cheque.

So Hey! What about that?

I feel like a renaissance court painter commissioned by the Medici family.

I have delusions of grandeur way above my station. The few people who know me well are already aware of this rather sad fact. But Hey-Ho and up she rises. The beast will out!! I'm really looking forward to the challenge.

Benin Africa

The Pope, Bless him, is visiting Benin, West Africa. One of the poorest nations on the planet. Not quite so poor as Burkino Fasu or maybe Mali.... but the pope has left his vulgarly opulent palace in Rome to spread his word to a blossoming African world where Catholicism is actually expanding and flourishing. The converts there are probably not aware of the paedophile priests who have buggered little boys across our world from Ireland to Australia. They also might not fully grasp the pope's message that aides is bad. Very bad. But condom use is much much worse!! The centuries-old religion in Benin centres around vooduism. The west likes to camp this up with stories like sticking pins in dolls etc, plus whitch-craft etc .
The pope has encouraged the people of Benin not to believe in magic!!! His own religion, of course, is predicated on the miracle stories of Jesus, as described in the gospel stories; as being TRUE!! So for Mr Ratzinger, Africans have Magic and we have Miracles. They are obviously wrong and misguided whilst we are the way the truth and the light.
Every Easter the pope appears at his window facing St Peter's Square and prays for world peace. When is somebody going to tell him that it just isn't working.

HONG KONG THERE I WAS

Hello Blog-Fans!!

I got back and saw all the hundreds of emails you kindly sent asking for up-dates. I am always stunned by the number of you sad people out there just gasping and drooling for more news and blogs. I didn't manage to get a picture showing just how cute , cheeky and talented little Moo is!

At 13 months she can almost "sprint"! She's so fast!! Imagine that she has a duster in each hand and she's cleaning imaginary windows as she goes, that might give you some idea. See the football on the floor next to Hester. She kicks and dribbles that around the room with some skill, I can tell you!!!!

AND SHE DANCES!!!!!! Hester played some Beyonce (Bee Yon Say if you've never heard of her) and immediately Moo smiles and bobs up and down, giving at the knees! It's hysterical!!! We were walking through a shopping Mall. We had been for breakfast at the Mandarin Hotel on Central and needed to pick up some essentials from M and S afterwards. So we set off along corridors and spaces of marble, polished granite, chrome, glass and the pristine/dazzling horizontal, perpendicular and bizarre geometry of down-town Hong-Kong. Every vertical dimension, by the way, in Hong Kong, is just a "vehicle" for any and every BRAND. (I might return to that theme later) The flat shiny floors are perfect for Moo to strut her stuff Ussain Bolt meets Whacky Races...Look-out!!! So she doesn't need to hold anyones hand. She's happy to trot along beside us ( little arms waving to keep her balanced and to clean imaginary windows) when suddenly she hears some tannoy Musak playing. Stops in her tracks, grins wideley, and proceeds to DANCE her foot-planted, hands up, bobbbing up and down, little individual dance. I put it to you ladies and gentlemen of the jury......that we have here among us .........one crazy, cute amazing kid. She's only one year old for goodness-sake!!!!

Hester's outrageous talents centered around language, (I think), though she was part of the Dream-Team Hotwells Net-Ball team that beat all-comers in the 1990's!!! Lest U forgot!! But what do we have here in little MOO!!!

We stand open-mouthed..........., she's really physical, she's energetic, determined, yet with all her verbal skills ahead of her. We shall see.......................................or to be more precise in this context.........................We shall hear.

Go MOO!!!!!!!!!

Hong Kong Here I Come

I've just got to be the luckiest father and grandfather anytime anyhow anywhere. When you check your bank account, your savings account, your car your wardrobe your goods and chattells to assess your wealth do you ever check your other assets in quite the same way? Look at this gorgeous picture!! This surely is the true meaning of wealth. You know what they say. "You can't take it with you!" Meaning that your worldly wealth is meaningless. Well it isn't!!! This worldly worth is everything and unquantifiable and precious and unfathomable. I fly out tomorrow (sorry, let me clarify) I will be taking a plane trip to Hong Kong for a week. So please Blog-Fans take note that I will be unavailable to respond to your comments, notes, emails and correspondence. I'll get back to you on my return.

3000BC sculpture

This piece of art should blow your mind. If it doesn't then you don't have a mind. A piece of carved limestone from 3000BC mesopotamia depicting a lioness with human characteristics.

FUN TIMES, FUN CITY, FUN WORLD

Hey Blog Fans!!!

I'm really sorry to dump this shit on you.

You are having a dinner party, or cocktail party, or watching a movie, or painting your finger-nails................or checking your fridge for a snack..Go back many decades for the following to be true!!! Every year 9 million children die on this planet before the age of 5.

Dadaab

Hey!!! Here are some holiday brochure pictures for you. You can travel the world, see some foreign landscapes and meet some interesting people!!! Two pictures of Daddab refugee camp, Kenya. Most Fugees are from Somalia and Ethiopia. Those trekking in from Southern Sudan are not very well represented because most of them died en-route. So when you check-in there's one language that you won't have to bother much about. This is one of three major refugee camps in Kenya. Each camp caters for 400,000 refugees and there are countless thousands who have not managed to get to a camp. Do you remember the phrase "colateral-damage"??? I love that phrase!!! Catastrophic, biblical famines tend not to happen in liberal democracies. They tend to happen in war-torn, tribal, poverty stricken parts of the world which happen to be affected by droughts. Asia is largely monsoon driven, so the seasonal rains which have gone a bit over the top in Thailand recently at least give the people guaranteed rainfall. Even India, outide the monsoon belt is blessed with the melt-waters from the Himalayas. Poor old Africa, from whence we all came has no monsoon, no melt-water and very little liberal democracy. But hey! That's the way it is. You can see here the way extinctions happen. It's simple and brutal. Without UN funds and numerous charities millions of these precious beautiful individuals would be dead.