Monday 28 June 2010

Lime Kiln

I decided to have a go with acrylics. To get the feel of them I wanted a simple picture and chose this view of an old abandoned Lime Kiln that I discovered in Yorkshire last year. I struggled to get a decent wash down for the background hills and found colour mixing difficult, although that applies to everything I do any way. I'm not pleased with the end result but don't know how much of that is down to my using a new medium so I will do this again in watercolour when I can, just to help me better appreciate the differences between the two mediums.

Saturday 19 June 2010

Gulf Challenge

One of my followers, Sandra, invited me to take part in the Gulf Challenge. I have agreed though available time is an issue. Still, I will get there.

In the meantime, I remembered this photograph I took a while ago of a Black Headed Gull. The Gull's expression says it all. Click on the photo to see a larger version.

Thursday 17 June 2010

Artists block.

It's been a while since I last posted art in my blog and that's because I haven't done any. There are many reasons ... very busy at work, jobs at home, family issues, other online distractions ... and there just aren't enough hours in the day. When I do find an opportunity to do something, I usually have only an hour or so and, to be quite honest, just can't seem to put my mind to getting out the stuff and looking for something to draw or paint.

I always believed 'artists block' was where an artist simply couldn't summon up suitable idea's in the same way as 'writers block' leaves an author devoid of words, but now I'm wondering if it's also a case of "can't be bothered". If you have any tips for getting the juices flowing again, let me hear from you.

This drawing was done a few years ago and is of a character created by a friend. It was a project to create a 3D image using computer software and he did very well. I couldn't resist getting it down on paper.

Saturday 5 June 2010

World Cup Forecast

Back in 2002 I was wrestling with financial modelling and as an experiment and learning aid, I built myself a World Cup model that endeavoured to 'predict' the winner. I didn't do very well. In 2006 I built an improved model and successfully forecast 66% of the winners and losers. I've decided to have a go again.

This is only a bit of fun ... most of the scores won't happen as forecasted ... but the model 'learns' about the various teams' capabilities as the competition progresses and it's interesting (if you like that sort of thing) to see the forecasted results changing as the competition progresses.

If anyone is interested, I've built all of this into some web pages and it can be found here ..... World Cup Forecast

As I've stated on the web site, DO NOT rush out and place bets on the basis on this. I know absolutely nothing about football (other than kicking the ball into the other teams net counts as a goal and kicking it into your own net makes your team mates shout angrily). This is just a bit of harmless fun and if the actual results bare any resemblance to the predicted ones, it will be more by luck than judgement.

Enjoy the footie!!!!