Thusday 16th November 17:00

Dear Diary,

As I imagined I didn't get chance to do a great deal of painting today.....a few brush strokes this morning and that was all.

It turned out that some of the hi-fi that I was photographing today was actually hi-fi that I had designed (style-wise) so in a sense it was a very rewarding day for me nonetheless.





As far as I know I have pretty much a full day free on Friday - I shall certainly finish Midge's portrait and get pretty close to finishing Jennie's figure too...

Have fun!

Thursday 16th November 06:45

Dear Diary,

Sorry, I have been neglecting you this week...

..it has been a "design week" - so not much I can say really.

However, I have been involved with a portrait swap in one of the forums that I subscribe to. The idea is that 20-30 artists pair up and paint each other, sending the finished painting/pastel/pencil or whatever to the recipient in time for christmas. All good fun too!

In amongst the design work I've managed to find a little time to start my two portraits...


..I'll hopefully finish those in the next day or so.

In the meantime today is devoted to photography. Unfortunately I'm not photographing beautiful women with a view to painting masterpieces - I'm photographing some hi-fi with a view to making some point of sale...

..ah well, it brings the bacon home!

Have fun,

Mark HH

Saturday 11th November 18:00

Dear Diary,

I didn't write anything this morning and I'm not writing much now either...



..I'm cracking open the champagne - because the painting that nearly killed me is finished! And she's beautiful! It bears my signature and my daughter's too!



Good night!

Friday 10th November 17:20

Dear Diary,

Today we took the "Mona Lisa" to school - for the grand unveiling. The head had called for a full school assembly and as you can see there were quite a lot of them! it was funny to think that each of the children I could see before me had taken painted some of the our painting. A few bits and pieces were said and then I was asked to stand up and unveil their painting...



..it was a such magical moment - lots of "gasps" and "whoops" - job done! I duly thanked them all - I wanted to say that it had been an honour and a pleasure to work with such talented artist's - but apparently I didn't say anything like that (not the best public speaker...) but I did get a thank you or two in there!

After the assembly the children's parents were welcomed in to see what all the fuss was about - I had a chat with a few of them - one said "My boy told me about this - he said he'd been painting with mud!"



On top of all that I made a determined effort to get some more of "The Veil" painted! I attacked it with a vengence today and got quite a bit done - I can't wait until this is finished...



..have fun! I'm now going to find a quiet corner and hiberbate for the winter.

Thursday 9th November 06:15

Design work today...

..I have a couple of fun projects to take care of today and a photo-retouch for a client. But guess what we're working on tomorrow?

Yes! The Veil!!!!!!

I've been looking into European and international publishing recently and I have some very favourable responses - I'll be following those up to.

Have fun...

Wednesday 8th November 12:30

We did it!!!!!!!

And this is what all the fuss was about...

..yesterday I went back to school!

The headmistress and I had set up a very special art project for the children - they were all going to help me paint a famous painting and that is exactly what we did! I set up at about 07:30 and the children started to come to me from 08:00 and throughout the day. In total over 200 people helped me yesterday to put this together...

..the best thing is that as we painted certain areas I then hid what we had done under a second loose canvas - the pupils and staff still don't know what they have painted yet - there is going to be a full school assembly later in the week where we will unveil it. the plan is that we will sell small limited edition prints to the children's parents to help raise money for school funds.

Quite by "chance" the press arrived at lunchtime. This was great for me as I hearded everyone, all but the press, Susie my helper and the headmistress out of the "studio" - we had a photoshoot and I got to see how things were progressing - you can imagine how relieved I was when I heard a few gasps and saw that it was working out!

It was one of the most stressful yet rewarding projects I have ever undertaken! And today I feel wonderful - and absolutely worn out!

Have fun!!!!

Tuesday 7th November 05:30

..today's the day!

"The Spaldwick School Great Art Project!"

I have everything packed that I think the children and I might need to make a great painting. I will be setting up at the school at around 07:30 and in order to fit everyone in, some of the older children are painting at around 08:00...

..we hope to finish by around 15:30 - which is good news as my daughter (and participant) then has a birthday party to go to!

I should have some good and fun photographs to show you later today.

(only had a bout 1000 deborah's this morning...)

Have fun - I know I will!

Monday 6th November 12:55

Oooops - I missed a day or two! And i have no picture for this thrilling installment either...

..I have however been working hard behind the scenes. In the morning (07:30) I'll be setting up at the school and we'll be painting for Britain! I will have some photographs of the event.

In the meantime "deborah" seems to have changed her attack slightly...not only am I getting a great deal of spam forwarded to her via an old e-mail address but now I'm getting a whole load more spam all coming from "deborah's" with different sirnames - god she's keen! I even went to the trouble of disabling the e-mail forwarding from the old .com and still they get forwarded - are the old hosts implicated in this?

Have fun - I'm just getting nervous!

Thursday 2nd November 18:45

Dear Diary - still battling with the amazing "deborah" - this has turned into a crusade now...

..despite this I did some of the school painting - this was great fun for me. Not only did it show me that the project will actually "fly" I got to paint like a 5-8year old! Remember this is a painting made from square digital pixels and the more analogue overlap and randomness the better the finished painting will be! I'll try to post a pic in the morning...

..other news - a German publishing company got in touch with me today and it looks like we might be thinking along the same wavelength - perhaps we can do some business.

Finally for tonight - I didn't manage to paint any more of "The Veil" and there is a hectic weekend ahead - will I ever finish it?

Have a good night - more in the morning!

Thursday 2nd November 05:15

Morning all...

I'm about to paint a little more of "The Veil" - I'm slowly getting through it!

Then I willl seal the painting for the school project - the last thing I want is for all the numbers to get rubbed off as the day progresses - imagine the flap that Susie and I would be in!

I have a design meeting at 09:30, which will take all of the morning, but when I return I should be able to paint some of the squares of the school project...

.."Deborah" sent me only 420 e-mails overnight - maybe she's getting bored with me!

Have fun!

Wednesday 1st November 16:45

One...three...two...two...four...twelve...nine...nine...nine...eight...
seven...four...four...six...seven...seven...eight...

..this is how most of the day went. I called out the numbers and Susie wrote them on the canvas. I had however forgetten to tell anyone (including myself) that I had upped the resolution. There were not the 3600 numbers that I had imagined - there were 5776!!!!

Imagine saying the numbers one to twelve that many times...the sounds become meaningless the figures that Susie was writing became meaningless - it really was the most mind-numbingly-boring thing I have ever done in my life...

..some people have coffee mornings - but I started to gigle as it sounded like we were having a "pi" morning - repeating the digits of pi for the fun of it!

..the best thing is it's done!

I now have to paint out 3000-4000 of the squares and leave enough for the children of the school to finish. That part will be the easy part!

Not much else to say really - apart from deborah at c21-design has sent me another 500 or 600 spam mails throughout the day - It wouldn't be so bad if i was interested in the share prices of "Toss-pot inc."

Design morning ahead and then some painting...

Have fun!

Wednesday 1st November 08:00

Morning all...

..I started work at around 05:00 this morning - only to find I had about 800 un-deliverable e-mails purporting to be sent from a "deborah" from "C21-Design" (the name of my old design company) - does this ever happen to you?

Once I'd waded through that lot I began to paint some more of "The Veil" - we'll get there!

Today Susie and I are working on the school project. We have to number up 3600 squares, the numbers represent the shades of paint that the school children have to paint. How mind numbingly boring that might be - I have no idea, but I will let you know...

..anyway the school run calls - back soon!