Birds and Railway Engines

Since delivering my last painting I met the recipients at a wedding and they were thrilled at the painting of their cottage. Always nice to get feedback on ones efforts. Despite the recession I took the plunge and bought a new telephoto lens for my camera a couple of weeks ago. An ultra zoom it enables some great opportunities for birds. I captured these Gadwalls at a local nature reserve on a very cold day.


This morning the preserved steam locomotive Tangmere was passing nearby so took the opportunity to get a photograph as she crossed the railway viaduct on her way to Fareham.

Good News

I had my post operation trip to the hospital today, for the result of the biopsy of the growth that was removed from my hand. It was a "Bowenoid Keratosis", which sounds impressive, but then it could be a plant name, what do I know!! The Good news is that is was not malignant and so have the all clear, the downside is that I am now back on washing up duties.

Tomorrow the Gresley A4 Pacific steam locomotive 'Bittern' will be passing nearby railway line on a steam speacial trip, so I shall be out early tomorrow with my camera to try and get some shots.

A hospital trip and a new painting

Following a visit to my doctor I was referred to the local hospital for the removal of a skin cancer. Unfortunately this was on my brush hand so a partially completed painting had to wait until a couple of days ago before it could be resumed. As with most things there is always a plus side and it has excused me from dishwashing duties for the time being.

This is the painting, of a Great Western Railway pannier tank locomotive running alongside the River Dart in Devon. This is from a photograph I took of the scene about twenty years ago.



I have the stitches removed from my hand next Thursday,and I'm hoping they will finish in time for me to go and photograph a Gresley A4 Pacific locomotive that will be running a steam special that day.

Photographic expeditions

I've been out on a few photographic expeditions, gaining reference photographs for some of my future paintings. First was a trip to the Bluebell Railway in Sussex which I have not visited for many years. Had a pleasant day there with plenty to photograph and followed this with a quick visit to the nearby Sheffield Park gardens, which kept the wife happy :)

This was one of the shots of a U class Southern Railway locomotive. To see more of my train photographs just click the picture

The next was a BR "Britannia" class locomotive which was on a steam special run passing through Whitchurch, on it's way from London to Bath and Bristol, I thought I was going to miss it, having got slightly lost whilst looking for a good location to shoot from and ended up driving a lot further than anticipated, but made it in time.

And Yesterday the last ocean going Paddle Steamer "Waverley" was captured as she entered Portsmouth harbour, in some rare sunshine amongst all the rain we have been having.

I hope to utilise all these into paintings in due course, in the meantime why not check out my website www.artyman.co.uk to see what other delights are available.

Train Spotting

Following on from the train painting I did a few weeks back I searched the web to find some locations where I could photograph steam on a mainline. I came across a website and learnt of a steam special running from London Waterloo to Weymouth, being pulled by an old Southern Railway Bulleid air smoothed pacific locomotive 'Tangmere' one of the Battle of Britain class, appropriate in this the 90th anniversary of the Royal Air Force. I decided that a good vantage point would be to the west of Southampton Central station, unfortunately the weather hadn't taken any notice of the name of the train, 'Sunny Coast Special' and I ended up getting soaked, and what was worse was that after drying out all my gear including my mobile phone, I didn't get one shot worth keeping. The rain gave all the pictures a very grainy quality like something taken with an old box brownie.

Not to be deterred I found an old photograph taken on the Torbay - Kingswear line in Devon whilst on holiday with my son many years ago and this painting is the result.