Salvador Dali, Eat Your Heart Out.

Today I thought I should get on with some work. There are bills to pay, materials to buy. The road tax runs out at the end of this month too. I tell you this frugal living can get expensive at times.

Anyway it's getting near, dare I say it, Christmas. People like having portraits done around this time, and I have a few to do. Mainly drawings or pastels. I enjoy doing pastel portraits because they are quick and easy.
I will qualify that last remark. Sometimes, they are quick and easy.

My latest effort would not go right. Which is a bit of a shame because I wanted to share the different stages of it with you, right through to the finished article. I have decided to show you anyway. Just to demonstrate that I am not really as talented as some of you so kindly say I am. Sometimes it just goes wrong.

My first mistake was not sticking to the normal way I do things. Normally I would use a tinted paper. Today I used a white paper and applied a watercolour wash. I suppose I just wanted to do things differently for a change. I should really have known better.
Now where has it gone? It was here a moment ago. How can a photo just vanish? I'll try and upload it again. So you can see the sequence of events. Here it is.

I applied a light wash.

Then I started sketching in. Very soon I knew it wasn't going as I wanted, but for some odd reason I kept going.

Started sketching in.

After a while it looked like this. No sorry, it didn't look like this. It was this. I gave up trying at this stage

Time to give up.

But I didn't give up entirely. I decided to turn it into a surreal picture of a baby.

So all is not lost after all. I shall put it in my ramshackle gallery. Someone will buy it. Got to be worth a couple of hundred quid, I would think. I might settle for ten though. No point in being greedy.

I wouldn't buy it though. Not even for a tenner. Would you?

One day when I am long dead. I fully expect this picture to be declared a surrealist masterpiece. People will talk about the artist, that's me, in hushed reverential tones. Or they may just be whispering.

They may be describing me as a genius,but more likely I expect the word they will use most will be,'weirdo'.