Christmas parties

Two in a row was always going to be tough.

I get through Thursday night okay by leaving early, but Friday it all goes Pete Tong:

• I loose my bow tie
• I spill red wine all down my shirt (dancing while drinking never works)
• I do okay on the bucking reindeer
• I hog the karaoke microphone and murder Queen, Elton John, Abba ... and the list goes on
• I round it all off by asking the taxi driver if I can paint his portrait.

Oh dear.

On the plus side ....

here's some sketches purporting to be of Jeffrey Archer.

I just can't seem to get the likeness right, so here's a sketch of Casares in Spain that I do like:

And now for something completely different ...

Well, a bit different anyway.

Day Three

Who's idea was this? Oh, yes, ... mine.

Was it such a bad one? Where did it all go wrong? Maybe I should have taken more care in drawing the booth:

- it did sort of go wonkey. Maybe people thought they'd get a wonkey head picture or something - as if...

Live & learn. No paying trade, but here's a couple of willing assistants that helped while away the time:

Day Two

You want day two?

You Want Day Two?!!

YOU CAN'T HANDLE DAY TWO!!!

It was that bad, but at least I had a chair to draw ..

And another one for the animal lovers:

Day One

It could have gone worse, I mean it's not as if I stood like a lemon in a stupid outfit for three hours without selling anything. Oh no, wait ...

It's bound to get better over the weekend - I mean you can understand that Friday night was always going to be a bit slow, but the weekend, yeah, they'll be queuing round the block ...

And at least England are stuffing the Aussies in the cricket.

Here's some more warm up stuff:

And one for the animal lovers:

Warming up

That's me, I mean, getting ready for next week - not the weather.

I'm still sketching anyone who'll sit still at work:

Oh and another painting:

And the work in progress is looking interesting:

Sketch Madness

Why do I do these things?

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Check it out ...

Nothing wrong with that, but I've only gone and volunteered to dress up as a butcher/deli man/supermarket person and do on the spot portrait sketches for the duration of the show - "Ben's Portrait Sketch Booth".

Now it's coming to the crunch, I find myself in dire need of some practice and hence roping in any/every one at work to model ...

How bad can it be?

Yeah, thought so ...

Ketchup the Third

It's been a while and apologies for that, but I'm still kicking. A couple of recent paintings with the promise of less of gap until the next post ...

More Ketchup

From a relaxing trip to see my brother in Wales:

And other stuff I've done recently

Ketchup

Okay, so the blog has died a death. Like I said, BORN LAZY. But that's no reason why I can't just post images of paintings as and when. So herewith a bit of a katchup:

Outside Jamie's

Okay, okay

To Boldly Go