@Lizzie
You go through life having a few successes Lizzie.....Mind you, I have made a dic*head of myself a few times too thought!
I was really happy with that oil though. I had a good teacher....and I think we can all achieve what ever we have a go at when we really want to. And I really did want to paint! My teacher said, "In a portrait the eyes are the hardest...you can make Jesus Christ look like the devil, just with the eyes"! So I did just my eyes on paper maybe 80 times before I got the result I wanted. Those eyes tell you a lot about me, although that phone shot does not look anywhere near as clear or expresive as the actual canvas. I envy those street artists who do shots like that and get it together better in five minutes than the two weeks that it took me!
Did you see the link to that jump? That was a serious amount of fun!
My main challenge now is to get this house finished and I finding all sorts of quirky ways to do that.
As I said I have totally changed the layout inside this old house!
What was the old bathroom has now become half the lounge and half the new kitchen behind..
Once I did all the forming, roof work and gyprocking I ended up with this recessed panel in the wall in the new lounge...
I wanted to make some sort of feature of it and one winter Saturday morning about that time it was foggy, Ade and I were sitting in the rear Den looking out into the garden when these four Adelaide Rosellas came and settled in the Elm tree in the garden. I took a picture of them and that night while Ade and I were having a drink or two she said....."Wouldn't it be good if we could have that picture blown up and put into that space"!!
Next morning I 'hot footed' it down to Atkins Technocolour with the camera card in my hand and I said to the girl on the front desk..."Can you blow this up to a large size for me"....she said "Sure can, what size would you like, we will maybe be able to get to 90cmx50cm before it starts to get a bit pixelly"!
I said...."Oh no, I want it 3 metres by 1.5".....and she looked at me like I was a complete lunie!!
She went and got a tech from out the back and we discussed it together and invited me to come out and see what could be done. He fiddled with this and that for about 10 minutes and said ....'That is your 3m x 1.5' and proceeded to print it onto a sort of wallpaper. $1,300 later I left and this is the result of that....
It means something Lizzie because it's not some south sea coral island...it's our back yard. And just to add insult to injury, I motorised that TV! It goes down behind the little sideboard when not in use!
And directly behind that this was the toilet and laundry after I knocked the walls out, blocked one window and put in another and started recladding....
And this is how the Kitchen looks now....
I have finished about 70% of the work I want to do here and I just hope I can get it completed and just enjoy it before I am too old and have to move into a nursing home!!
Cheers.....Rob