#069 Comics

The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed the last few days paintings have been posted from my mobile phone while I have been visiting my family in wildest Norfolk! My Dad was very sucesfull this morning in sending us away with lots of things he has been trying to offload for a while now. These two comics are part of  a big ole stack of Spiderman comics. Specifically two editions of 'Spiderman and The Hulk team up' oh...I must have been in 8 yr old heaven.

#068 Skittle

Playing with my three nephews is not only top fun and utterly knackering, its a great excuse to paint brightly coloured toys.

#067 Wheel

This is actually the wheel from a telephone, not mine you understand its my nephews. My phone doesn't have any wheels, shame.

#066 Vase

This is one of my Mums vases, it looked so nice and fresh this morning which is the opposite of what I look like!

#065 book

This is the corner of a book about 'Art from Far Lands' and has some lovely photos of indian sculpture and painting and some great middle east stuff.  Bought this morning form the library at work (Pittville) where they are selling off lots of the old stock....sad but, I get this lovely thing!

#064 Gloves

This is two fingers of a pair of gloves, I'm not being rude it just is two fingers!

#063 Bass String end

This is veeeery obscure its the end of one of my bass guitar strings it is wound with red cotton and I thought it looked rather fetching with its shadow.

#062 Radio

In good 'Dan Young, Daily' fashion I have used my daily life as inspiration for todays painting. This is a section of a my studio radio. I was talking on the Fay Hatcher show on the radio this afternoon about all sorts of things including these daily paintings, life after University, papier mache beer adverts and evening classes (the one I teach is the painting styles and techniques, of course! Other courses are available;) ). Visit the BBC Gloucestershire 'listen again' service to well.. ummm.. listen again, I appear at about 40 mins in for two slots either side of Elton John!

#061 Bag of Potatoes

The gardeners among you may have been caught up in a 'Potato Event' or 'Potato Day' or even a 'Spud Bash'. Today has been my first experience of such an event. What we found upon going to what is a normally very quiet garden centre was cars parked all over the road, two flourescent jacket wearing parking attendants, people everywhere and a bewildering array of types of potatos to choose from, with lots of overheard conversations about potato varieties, chips/roasties even the dreaded blight. You can buy huge sacks, individual spuds or mix and match your 'apples of the ground'. We chose a sensibly sized paper bag of 'Oriana' a first early salad potato with a waxy texture. I expect over the year there will be some more daily details of the pots!

#060 Penknife

I liked last nights knife handle so much here is my penknife handle no long history with this one though!

#059 Stanley Knife

Todays daily detail is the shaft of  my stanley knife, I have had it, I think, since I first went to art school in Norwich in 1994, which is why the blue paint has flaked off and you can see the grey metal underneath which here is reminiscent of a  big ole Norfolk skyscape with flat beach underneath it.

#058 Pan Lid Handle

This is the pan lid handle of my gesso pot, I must make some more boards, I am running out of different sizes and I am enjoying the different sized paintings this year.

#057 Apples

Joyeux anniversaire Monsieur Cézanne!

#056 Green Bananas

We bought some new Bananas, very green ones as you can see. The two yellow ones in the background are for tomorrow...I just hope the others will ripen in time..it'll be okay if they don't it would just be nice that's all.

#055 In my Toolbox

This is a rawlplug or wall plug (depends if you are sponsored by rawlplug or not) I'm not! In other news, over at my Etsy shop there is a January sale going on! Don't worry you won't have to camp outside from 5 o'clock in the morning or push past anyone to get what you want all you need to do is simply enter this code: DYDJANSALE to claim your 20% discount on the payment page.

#054 Lithops

These little buggers (AKA Lithops AKA Living Stones) are really, really difficult to keep alive, this one has been going for a few year now so I am hopiong I have cracked it. I pride myself on getting house plants to flower so I won't be happy until this springs forth with its daisy like bloom.

#053 Cactus in the window

I opened the studio blinds this evening, I wasn't sure why, thento my surprise I fancied painting this cactus with the window behind, its dark outside so the glass is reflecting a bit of the inside but is still pretty dark and impenetrable.

#052 Sausage on a plate

This one has shades of the opening sequence to Grange Hill, which if you are not from the UK and have no idea what I am talking abou you can see it here and watch out for the flying sausage, an iconic image from my youth.

#051 Painting Books

Ths is a small collection of painting technique boks that I have collected over the years, from left 'oil painting' a 1950's tome, the thin yellow book is a ladybird book about oil painting, the middle book is the 'Painters Pocket Guide', then a book about 15th century crafts next to a book in the same series about Tempera Painting

#050 Red Potato

I was most excited by using my tube of shevenings violet than anything else when I clocked this red potato in our shopping basket. I have had it since the first year of daily oil paintings but nothing that needed that colour cropped up.

#049 Orange Amp

This is the corner of my orange amp, made by orange amps and it is also orange in colour, it doesnt taste like orange or sound like orange well it sort of does..

#048 Back of Picture

Another back to work/back of work painting. Today is my first day back after three whole weeks off! I have forgotten what Im supposed to do... This is pretty much what the back of all of these paintings looks like, you can see the paintings number, #048 in this case, and some of the gesso that has dribbled down the edge onto the back of the mdf panel during priming. I get a strange sense of satisfaction from mixing up a good MDF colour match, and I am pretty pleased with this one.

#047 Back of Frame

Back to work tomorrow, and here is the back of some of my work! This is the reverse corner of a frame that currently houses one of last years watercolour daily paintings. The black things you see are framing nails that hold the back board in and the white around the edge is some lime wax that has crept round the edge!

#046 Cabbage

A veggie antodote to last nights meat...and will be acompaning my chicken, cider and mushroom casserole this evening.

#045 Ham

I was going to apologise to any vegetarians out there but I think I should be apologising to the meat eaters. I have managed to paint a slice of ham (which is very similar to the slice I had in my sandwich today) and make it look so pink, fleshy and obscene it actually puts me off eating it, a little. Maybe because its painted larger than life andfills the picture so you are confronted by the sheer visual unrefined meatiness of it, it was tasty in a poppy seed roll with watercress and rocket though.

#044 Van Gogh Postcard

I will admit to making a shocker of a painting before this one. It all seems to be going along ok, the brush marks seem to be going in nice places... and then all of a sudden it turns to mush in front of your eyes! Bah, I said as I threw the offending picture to one side.  I was then captured by the glorious texture of the background in this postcard of one of Van Goghs blossom trees. So, I put the (now glowing) postcard on my easel in front of a canvas which was already there and then realised I had inadvertantly set up todays still life detail, my empty canvas, Vincents corner and my easel complete wth paint blobs. I had originally signed next to Vincent but it didn't feel right which is why my signature is on my canvas.

#043 Three Vases

I am a big Giorgio Morandi fan, especially his paintings of vases all grouped together. So this is my grouped together vases, .

#042 Saw Handle

I made a marvellous, if a little unstable, shelf unit this afternoon and I used this saw to cut some bits of wood and then I left it lying on this purple carpet. So there you have it, I will let you know if the shelf stays wobbly tomorrow when the glue drys...

#041 Spilt Cayenne Pepper

Theres no use crying over spilt Cayenne pepper!

#040 Slate Coaster

I felt like indulging my love of painting red things today and we have a lot of red stuff aorund. INcluding this tablecloth with slate drinks coaster on.

#039 The Corner of my Spiderman Piggy Bank

Yep, and it's the best painting I have made all year!