Well a good week just gone and on Thursday, we are off traveling again. This time to the New Wine festival at Somerset where I am again exhibiting and also to our usual lovely stay in that very old barn conversion in Crossecombe. 

On Saturday just gone I was bullied by friends and wife to enter a local art festival, exhibiting one of my waste paper sculptures and lo and behold it got the first prize. IT being as it is would not let me place an image of it on this site, so here is a similar creation, this time of 1st. cent. Galilee and the type of boats which the disciples used to fish from.

We looking forwards to a good refreshing week at New Wine and lets hope that my exhibition sells something. After that we are going to spend a few days relaxing with our dear friends in Sheffield.

See you in two weeks.

 

Had a good few days during the last week, lots has been happening. One of the events as well as the usual routing was talking to new art students at a local school (year 10). There was the usual mixture of interested and the not so interested; that's ok. But amongst the interested were over half a dozen young people with rather surprisingly amazing talent. I would love to see their work after three years at art school. It was pleasant experience, everybody was so nice and kept calling me sir!!! I'm not very used to that.

 

Just so that you know that I am not ignoring my trees, here's one I finished a few days ago.

First thank you to Malcolm; indeed Melk is in Austria and not Germany. Maybe to many borders were crossed and forgetfulness on occasion occurred as to where in reality I was.

Sketching on a trip like this is always challenging, and opportunities have to be taken as they arise. The two sketches on view today were both done from the boat as we chugged along.
The upper piece is a fishing lodge somewhere in Hungary, these were every few yards even in the wilder stretched of the river. You will notice the derrick type apparatus, their fishing is very technique ridden at times; if you are interested I will explain how they do it. The lower one is of a cabin cruiser on the continental divide, we saw many small boats of all shapes and sizes; the locals obviously loved their water based pastimes.
Works like the above may not be fine art, even if they can be rather nice drawings; however they do add significantly to the work as a whole by making statements of life styles, etc.
The work on the Danube is now finished, it comprises of  91 quick works, 6 worked up water-colours and about 100 photographs, an essay and lastly a map, filling three volumes.  This is available for anybody's perusal, just contact me.