WARNING!! The website has changed a few times since this was written.

15/11/3: New photos of Prague from our recent trip there.

6/11/3: Added some photos of fireworks taken at the display in Cambridge in 2003. This is the great thing about having a digital camera- you can take dozens of pictures of things and just delete the rubbish ones. Obviously, the delay on a digital camera makes it hard to get the picture you want but inevitably some catch a good explosions. I am really pleased with these. Also, note that these were taken holding the camera in my hand (no tripod!) either with the camera set to "night scene" setting or to "manual" with long exposures of 1/8 to 1 second (f2.8 or f2). I remember taking long exposure pictures of fireworks when I was young with an SLR that werent half as good as this.

Also, I have been looking at the website of Andy Foulds Web Design (sorry, no link yet- have a look on google). This has really opened my eyes to what is possible with web design. Not sure I am aver going to have time to get to that standard but I am feeling a little ashamed of my effort here. I may have to update this site sometime soon....

26/10/2: Added some new pictures today. One is totally new painting of the beach huts between Holkham and Wells-next-the-sea in Norfolk. We have been to that region several times this year for weekends away (see the photos section). Im pleased with how this painting turned out but once again it is a little "twee"- but that is almost certainly down to the choice of subject matter. The other painting is not so new as it was started in april on Iona and has been refined several times since. Last weekend I took the bold step of painting over much of it in a last ditch attempt to make it less sh**. I made the rock in the foreground closer and more prominent. This was a bit of an improvement but I also sawed the top third of the painting off - it used to be square with all of the top half a flat sky- and this has made the painting at least a third better. I still don't like it much though.

Also, we have recently brought a new computer that works!! That may not sound so special but our last PC crashed all the time, wouldn't run some programs and was slow. So now we have this one we should be able to do a bit more work on this website without so many frustrations.

23/9/3: I just got married! Hence no new painting for now, but I have got loads of photos. They are all hosted on our WeddingWebsite. . Thanks to all those who made it such a memorable day.

27/7/3: Just added new picture of Ruth in Greece 2003. I have been working on this for about 6 months on and off (mostly off). The more observant among you will have noticed that it is very similar to another picture on this site (Ruth in Greece 2001). The first picture took me an afternoon and the second one much longer. Still I am happy with it now. It was quite ambitious of me to try to paint something this big (the picture is about A1 size) but I think it has worked out well compared to the first one. Maybe I have beome a slightly better painter in the past 2 years.

21/7/3: Added new picture to New2003 section. It is very similar to another picture called "PictureNo.2" so ive put it with that one and called it "PictureNo.2No.2".

6/7/3: I have now finished my Life Drawing classes and have added some of the pictures from that to the site. They are no more than sketches as we were only given, at most 30, minutes per pose. Still I am happy with them. The course has made me a bit more relaxed about drawing and less careful. I think that is a good thing.

I have also added some of my recent photos of Norfolk from out 2 trips there this year.

24/6/3: Photos of Vienna added. No new paintings drawings for about 2 months now. Only sketches from life drawing and that isnt worth putting on here. Im too busy. Im too busy to punctuate.

19/6/3: Stop looking at me.

25/5/3: I have been looking at this site in a new way this week. After seeing the website of the tutor at the life drawing class I go to, I have been thinking maybe I am approaching this in the wrong way. This site has, basically, everything, I ever draw or paint, on it (for the last few years at least). There is quite a variation in quality and little filtering. Whereas, some of the other art sites I have looked at recently are very well put together, simple and all the paintings are of a high quality in one, or a few, styles. Mine is a bit more hickeldy-pickeldy than that. So, here is what I am thinking. Maybe I should take some time editing this down. Just put my best stuff up here. Streamline the design a bit so you have to open and close fewer windows to look at the pictures (maybe use some dynamic html to put together a image viewer?). What do you think? Is there anybody out there, and more importantly, do they care?

24/5/3: It has been another busy month. I have passed my driving test, started two new evening classes, turned 26 and begun looking for a car. Will try to buy a 2nd hand VW Polo as they seem pretty common, affordable and the smidgen of research I have done suggests they are reliable cars. It is all proving a bit of a headache at the moment but I hope that when I buy the car it will be worth it. No doubt Ruth will have me driving to the big out-of-town Sainsbury's regularly destroying the environment with pollution, helping Lord Sainsbury justify that enormous car park and undermining the traditional city center shopping experience.

One of the evening classes I have started is life drawing at Hills Road Sixth Form College. The course runs every tuesday 7-9pm for about 10 weeks and so far has been really good. A real bargain for only £50.We have had two models in the three weeks I have been going and it has been challenging drawing them. I notice that my drawing are all very "precise" and I am still measuring everything carefully. Some of the other people at the class, one lady in particular, have a very free way of drawing. Their pictures look as though they have not been measured and never appear to have any mistakes. The tutor is good as well- his name is Mark Rigby and he has his own website with, notably, none of his own life drawings. This can be forgiven because he is clearly talented and has a well developed style of painting I am envious of. Anyway, if you live in the cambridge area and want to try someting new then give this a go- I recommend it.

20/5/3: The love of my life, Ruth, has just started writing a weblog on her own website (uk.geocities.com/ruthieaddy). Those in the know like to call these online diaries "blogs" (we-blog, geddit?) and those that write them "bloggers". Ruth, being a bit of a trend setter, has jumped on this bandwagon and has gotten quite excited about her latest fad. Unfortunately, this site is top secret and still in development- she is very shy about her writings and will no doubt turn violent when she finds I have written this (little does she know, she probably is the only one that reads it!). So, have a look at her site. I note that she has has more that a little dig at me in places and so promoting her blog is, in a rather sick way, an attempt to get even. But seriously, she is quite good at writing and the site is worth a look. There are even some pictures for those of you that need illustrations with your words.

4/5/3: Have just spent the afternoon on the two pictures I started work on in Iona and have now added digital images of these to the New2003 section. Both of these were painted, in the most part, in the open on Iona at easter. If I am honest I would say I am not that happy with either. The picture of the caravan next to the "hillock" is the better of the two I think, but looks quite flat. The other picture of the north beach seems rather twee to me and looks a bit too much like a picture postcard view to be interesting. The beach really did look that idyllic, it is not me idealising it. I tried to make the painting better by painting the rocks with a spatula and thick impasto paint and I think this has worked well but the sea, again, looks rather flat and has no impression of depth. This is undoubtedly due to my lack of skill as a painter. Anyway, these are my first two attempts ever at painting landscapes out of in-situ so I think I should improve in future. The caravan picture was painted on a bloody cold and rainy day (the only one we had in the holiday), and if I can endure painting in those conditions for 5 hours I think I should be able to endure painting most things. Note to self: paint on hot mediterranian/caribbean islands in future.

Next week I start life drawing classes a Hills Road Sixth Form College, in Cambridge. I've only done life drawing once before and it wasn't that successful so I think this should be "challenging". No doubt some of the sketehes will find thier way onto this site before long.

29/4/3: Another month has slipped by. I have been busy at work but have started painting the large picture of Ruth in the Sea that I mentioned in the last entry. It is going reasonably well but I doubt I will have it finished for many months. I have the feeling I may have bitten off more than I can chew as it is so big and detailed it is taking me ages to paint even a small part of it. Given my tendency to paint over every bit half a dozen times I may lose patience before it is finished. Next week I start Life drawing classes so ther eshould be plent of new stuff appearing here over the next few weeks.

However, I have also been away to Iona (Scotland) and taken many, many pictures. These can be seen in the Photos section which has now been split up into several pages as it was becoming a bit unwieldly. Thanks to all those who made the holiday such a great one. Boy, it is hard going back to work this week! I also did a few paintings on the north beach in Iona. They are still unfinished but I hope to be able to finish them off and get some sort of image of them on the web next weekend. Watch this space.

9/3/3: It has been over a month since I last updated this bit. In that time I have started my new job, moved house, gotten engaged and started planning a wedding. So I have been busy. But I have not done much drawing or painting. I have a few ideas for furture projects which I have yet to start. Firstly, I am thinking of reworking the picture of Ruth in Greece, which I have always thought was one of my better pictures. I am going to try and paint it on a very large piece of MDF (about A1 size). Before I get started I think I will have to decide how I am going to change the water- this looks a bit flat and uninteresting in some areas (maybe a trip to the swimming pool is required). I am also been asked to make the portrait part of it more flattering (!).

So many apologies to those of you that look at this website every now and then. When life settles down a bit I will hopefully get a bit more time to produce more pictures and write this weblog.

7/2/3: Still keeping myself occupied with my few weeks off. Consequently, this weblog is being updated rather regularly at the moment with all the paintings I am doing with my spare time. I expect this last week is rather like what old age will be like: the odd trip down the shops, getting up late, no pressure to do anything. I have to say that the time seems to be slipping away rather quickly and sometimes I think that is no bad thing. Talking of retirement I went to see "About Schmidt" (the Jack Nicholson film about retirement, among other things) yesterday afternoon. The cinema was full of old people and I felt quite at home. Scary. Best not get ahead of myself thou', it is still a whole week until I start my first ever job!

The day after the last entry was made my pride made a recovery from discovering I had spent weeks on a painting that is inadmissable for the "Self-Portrait UK" competition. So I did a quick watercolour that I think is probably a bit better than the other picture I had anyway. This second picture is definitely the right size. This leaves my with one large self-portrait that frankly, I dont want in my house, let alone on my wall. What should I do with it? Any ideas to the usual email address please. On a similar note, I have also had another canvas that I was very unhappy with hanging around. This one, "Ruth on the Tube" has been in a half finished state for over 2 years now and resides in the toilet, in recognition of the fact I hate it (It is not even on this site- it's that bad!). This week, I finally bit the bullet and painted over it with a better, but rather, uninteresting picture of some Egrets. Tell me what you think.

3/2/3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I have been a bit slack at keeping up this weblog thingy. I was aiming to update it every weekend but as I had my PhD viva last week I was a bit busy. Actually, no I wasn't. I was just in shock from having finished and so have not been lounging around. I am now a doctor of philosophy (or at least will be in three months when all the paperwork is sorted out) so I am making the most of my time off before I start a proper job- my first. In these two weeks off I should be able to do a lot of painting and drawing- so keep looking at the site.

On the day of my viva I gave the three pictures I have done recently to my supervisors at imperial to show them I really was grateful for all the help they gave me over the last three years. The three pictures were HeartTreeFork (a poor physics-pun name for a picture), Picture No.2 (I painted it second and couldn't think of a name!) and Orange (a better, more appropriate name, I think). I hope they liked their pictures but if not, they were painted on MDF and will surely make good dartboards.

The original plan for my few weeks off was to make an effort to enter a few competitions. More from the point of view of giving me something to focus on than in hope of winning. But that didnt go very well. My recent self portrait, for instance, cannot be entered into the "Self-Portrait UK" competion because stupid old me painted a picture that measured 30 by 80 cm when the maximum size allowed is A2. Arse. The other idea was to enter a wildlife competion and I knew there was one with a closing date in March so I thought that would be ideal. But it was not to be. Despite the March closing date I found out yesterday (the 2nd of feb) that you must register before the 1st of feb to enter. What is all that about then? A deliberate attempt to foil disorganised amateurs like me, I suspect.

19/1/3: Just finished off another 2 paintings this week (Orange and Picture No. 2). At the moment I am pretty pleased with both. The former only took me 2 hours to do! All the three recent pictures I have done have been painted on MDF have worked out well. Using MDF means I can get a work surface of any size cheaply and easily- plus it will take any amount of paint and abuse without becoming ms-shapen. I would recommend it to anyone. The only problem is that I need to be more careful in sawing off bits of wood and getting the sides straight!

I had a message the other day from someone that had read this weblog. Bit surprising. I was not expecting anyone to actually read it. It has made me a bit nervous about what I write here, after all, it does say more about what I am thinking and who I am than anything else on this site. I'm not sure if I want anyone to know much about me so I will have to be careful what I say from now on. Bye.

14/1/3: Last weekend I handed over the commisioned portrait I have been working on for the last few months. The recipient/subject seemed pleased with the result. As you can tell if you read/view the mini-weblog I made charting the progress of the picture paintin it was tough going. The finish really sneaked up on me. One minute I thought the painting was rubbish and the next I had deemed it finished and was happy with it. Strange that. Unfortunately, it has to be kept hidden on the website for a while as it is a surprise for someone and, although they are unlikely to, I don't want them to see it on this website before they see the real thing.

I have also completed a picture I was talking about in the last log (HeartTreeFock, I think I shall call it- a bad pun for those physicists out there). It was quite well planned out in my head and consequently was very easy to paint. Just a few hours on a sunday afternoon (yes, I know I am a "sunday-afternoon" painter). Now working on some related pictures (all nominally based on photos of trees) that I hope I can use as presents in the near future.

3/1/3: The basic idea of this web log is to summarise what I am working on and where I want my pictures, and the website, to go next. I have just spent two days redesigning the website using DreamWeaver 4.0 (PC) and I am a bit too focussed on it at the moment. I have that feeling you get when you have just go a new computer game and have been playing it for 48 hours straight. At least getting obsessive about the website has actually improved it. It started off being just written in notepad using html when I first put it on the web 2 years ago. Then I progressed to FrontPageExpress, but that is very limited. Clearly, DreamWeaver can do more than I have investigated here- it is a struggle to keep the website simple when using software like that.

Going to try to be a bit more abstract in my paintings over the next year (that wont be hard as my pictures have tended to be quite lacking any abstraction). I have just finished a portrait I have been comissioned to do by a friend and that was rather "straight". This next weekend I am going to work on a painting of a tree I have been meaing to do for a while. I have a photo I took at night in Boston and that will form the basis of the image. Also, I intend to do a few more portraits, maybe of family, with a view to entering the national portrait award, but whether I will ever get round to it is hard to say. Finally, I definitely want to produce a few "series" of pictures as I am aware that repetition could be good for my work. I tend to just produce one image, in one styl,e of one thing, and then move onto something else. I don't want to get too bogged down with one idea but this is definitely an avenue to investigate. Anyway, keep looking at the website and you may see some of these things appearing over the next few months. AJB