Paint, A Birthday and a Goat.

Heath in Summer; Adele Cosgrove-Bray, 2017.

I have now bought kitchen paint.  I have yet to paint the kitchen.  Other things have been taking my time, such as writing Morgan: An Artisan-Sorcerer Story, and beavering away in my art studio.

On the easel, with only its sky painted so far, is Liverpool Waterfront #5, which is in oils.  But I'm already moving away from painting the iconic view of the city as seen from the River Mersey, and have been looking elsewhere along the river for material.  Oglet Shore, Speke is a watercolour of an often-overlooked little beach and meadow area close to the John Lennon Airport.  Local legend has it that George Harrison and the two McCartney brothers used to play here as small children, but then so did countless other kids and this isn't why I painted it.  I chose the area as it offers a contrast to other, more obvious sections of the Mersey.  At Oglet, you could almost be in the countryside - if it wasn't for planes regularly thundering overhead!

Oglet Shore, Speke; Adele Cosgrove-Bray; 2017.

I need a way of keeping some kind of inventory of my paintings.  I'm not sure of the best way to do this - some kind of spreadsheet, perhaps?  The inventory would need a thumbnail image of each painting, plus details such as size and medium, then if it's been exhibited, price, and if it's been sold.  If you have any bright ideas, please pass them this way!

We've had a bland summer, here on the Wirral peninsula.  Earlier in the year there was a brief blast of searing sunshine, and since then it's been rain and moderate temperatures all the way.  However, just to be contrary, as we head into September my strawberry plants have decided to produce some fruit.  These plants were only about 2" high when I potted them up in the spring, and so I didn't  expect them to do much this year but now they're covered in small, green berries.  Will anything come of this late crop?  Watch this space.

Richard turned 50 yesterday.  He said he felt good about reaching this milestone, and of course we both talked about how fast time seems to go by, and how it doesn't seem long since we were in our 20s and he was dreaming of earning his living as a photographer.  He actually went into his family's tradition of tattooing, and owned and ran his own studio in Liverpool city centre for 21 years.  He closed the studio at the end of 2014, and that felt like the end of an era for him.  He's now employed in a totally different field and is enjoying his work. 

Since closing the studio he's hardly done any art.  But recently the old photography interest has begun to simmer again, and he's now talking about buying a better camera.  (Actually, any camera would be better than the horrible thing he currently owns, which is insanely complex  and prone to jamming.)

I've just finished reading a great sci-fi novel by Peter Newman, called The Vagrant.  You have a nameless vagrant struggling to travel through a distopian world populated by treacherous people and various monsters - and a goat.  The goat character provided an occasional splash of comic relief.  I'll be looking for the other books in this series.

Liverpool Waterfront #3; Adele Cosgrove-Bray; 2017.