And I’m knackered.  I’ve been painting since 9am this morning, and I’m taking a break, but still have to finish off a few bits and pieces before I move onto my next project.  I need to get another 5 images for that one.  It’s really taking it out of me.  I feel drained today.  I have tonnes of ideas but translating them onto paper is a bit more difficult.  Anyway, I thought I’d add the images I created today, whilst I get a minute to myself. 

My first two pieces are of the Comet ship.  This was the first seagoing commerical steamboat in Europe, and was built in Port Glasgow – my home town – by John Wood and Henry Bell.  They used James Watt’s steam engine, whose improvements – the invention of the separate condenser -  were fundamental to shipping worldwide and to the Industrial Revolution.  The Comet was shipwrecked off Oban in 1820, and the engines were salvaged, and are now in the Science Museum in London.  A replica of the ship was built and is now stationed in Port Glasgow, just across from the old Town Hall and Coronation Park.

What I did with this was to draw the ship’s outline, and then I added geometric shapes all over the paper, entirely covering it.  I then filled in the various shapes with felt pen.  I then covered it with wax, and then covered in ink and bleached out the colour.  It didn’t turn out as I expected but it will do.  We have been told to leave our mistakes in the sketchbook, so here it is.

This image is the Comet again.  I had originally placed a photograph of the ship here, and intended to paint around it, but instead I painted over the top of it.  I painted this very much in the style of Edvard Munch’s Girls on the Bridge.

I then added an item about James Watt into the book, to give a bit of background to these images.  I aged the item to lend an air of history to it.

My next piece was to reflect the presence of the UK Nuclear Submarine programme. I took an image of a submarine sailing out into the River Clyde, from its base at Faslane Naval Base, and painted around that.  I painted this in oils.  You can see the photograph in the centre.  I painted partially over this to blend in with my painting.  I have another page which has a news article detailing Russian targets in Scotland.  It’s a fascinating piece from the late 1980s before the fall of Communism, but is also very frightening.  I did not realise the extent of the military scope in Scotland.  Funny how most of the UK bases are in Scotland and not in England. Hmm.

The next piece is of the Vital Spark.  The Vital Spark is a fictional boat from a series of books by Neil Munro.  The books are based on the boat, and around the central character, Peter McFarlane or as he is better known – Para Handy, which is an Anglicized version of the Gaelic ‘Para Shandaidh’ -  roughly equating as ‘Pete, son of Sandy’.  These books are hysterical, and were a staple of Scotland.  They made the books into a television series, and there have been remakes of it.  The books are essentially about the high-jinks of the Vital Spark and her crew, sailing up the Clyde and around the West Coast of Scotland.  When the VIC 72 (renamed Eilean Eisdeal: pronounced Ay-lan Ays-dil or Aysh-dil depending on the dialect) left the Maritime Museum in Inverary, heading towards the Glasgow River Festival in 2005, she bore the name ‘Vital Spark’.  The photograph I took the image from was taken when the Vital Spark was sitting in the River Clyde.

The final piece is a little comedic.  There is an old story dating back to the Napoleonic Wars that concerns the rivalry of my home town and the town immediately adjacent to it.  The story goes that during the Napoleonic War a ship docked in Greenock, and there was a monkey on board that was dressed in a French naval uniform.  It was said that the locals thought that the monkey was a French spy and was tried and hanged for treason.  This was the source of much amusement to the people of Port Glasgow, and they ridiculed the Greenockians for such an act.  Some time later, another story emerged but this time it was the turn of the Portonians to be ridiculed.  Apparently the Town Hall bell was in a bad state of repair, and the town officials decided that boiling the bell in tar would somehow help to restore it to its former glory.  As you can imagine, it didn’t help in the slightest!  So the Greenockians derided the Portonians for such a foolish act.  Ever since then, whenever a Greenockian says ‘Who boiled the bell?’, the reply is: ‘Who hung the monkey?’. 

There are many such tales from my home town and that of Greenock, where I also lived for many years.  It’s funny as I never hear any stories at all like this in Aberdeen, and I’ve been here for 13 years.  I think the reason for that is that around the River Clyde there were many migrants (native Gaels) who came from the Highlands and Islands for work, and these people brought with them a rich heritage of storytelling.  Up until the 1900s, the majority of Gaels spoke no English, and did not read or write in Gaelic either.  Therefore, their history was passed on through the oral tradition, and these stories (beul-aithris) would be told by a sennachaidh, which is something like a village storyteller, but they were much more than that.  They held all knowledge of the clan and village history.  They were very important within every clan.  Gaelic folklore is full of stories of the ethereal world, like An t-Each Uisge Poll nan Craobh, which kind of means Water Horse (kelpie) of the little pool of the trees. It’s hard to translate it into English, but roughly speaking it means kelpie of the bogs.  There are many stories of fairies, the underworld and such like, and there is a vast array of these type of stories surrounding my local area, and I’m certain it’s because of the influx of Gaels during the Industrial Revolution.

So that’s what I’ve done so far today.  Now back to the painting!