After a rather dismal summer I managed to find a few days sunshine and took the opportunity to grab a short holiday on the Isle of Wight. Whilst not baking temperatures it was sunny and very pleasant with some stunning scenery near where we were staying. I have plenty of photographs, and perhaps the only slight dissappointment was that there were no old Southern Railway locomotives when we visited the Isle of Wight Steam Railway at Havenstreet. They did have a fine collection of vintage carriages though, so not all was lost and they will prove useful reference for future paintings.

These are a few of the photo's that I took showing some of the magnificent views from St Catherines Down and further west along the coast toward Freshwater.

Since returning home I have sold three paintings at exhibition and now need to settle down to some serious work over the coming months to complete a commission and prepare for next years round of exhibitions.

Artists are always on the lookout for reference material for their paintings, particularly if they are technical subjects. I've been out on a couple of photographic expeditions, gaining reference photographs for future paintings. First was a trip to the Bluebell Railway in Sussex and had a pleasant day there followed by a quick visit to the nearby Sheffield Park gardens, which kept the missus happy :)

This was one of the shots of a Southern Railway U class locomotive.

The next was a BR "Britannia" class locomotive on a steam special passing through Whitchurch on it's way from London to Bath and Bristol, on Thursday.

And Yesterday the last ocean going Paddle Steamer "Waverley" was captured as she entered Portsmouth harbour.

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.

Having recovered from interupted sleep patterns to watch the Olympics, I got round to painting a new watercolour painting to celebrate the achievement of Ben Ainslie in winning his third Gold Medal, which he adds to the silver medal he gained at Atlanta in 1994. This makes him the most successful British Olympic sailor of all time, beating Rodney Pattison's previous record of two golds and a silver. I used to sail with Rodney's Olympic crew back when I was racing National Twelves. The rest of the team did us proud as well. This painting is going on exhibition at the end of the month.

It's been a busy couple of weeks with an exhibition over the Bank Holiday weekend which resulted in three sales, that should pay for some more paint !

I spent some time this week chasing a steam locomotive across Oxfordshire, a Stanier 4-6-2 'Duchess of Sutherland' that was on a steam preservation special run. I used Google maps to check out some locations on route and managed some reasonable photographs which will provide goood references for a future painting.