A friend of mine
told me she was 16 when she visited London for the first time. She went to watch
a Take That concert with three
friends. Her mum was apprehensive about the girls being left to their own
devices on the four day city break. One evening her mum drove her daughter to
the local bus depot where the coach would collect them. Upon seeing no mums
were going her apprehension soared. The coach arrived and the driver loaded the
cases in the hold-all. As the girls mounted the steps to the coach my friend said
her mum shouted, "Don't accept drinks from men or you'll wake up bleeding!"
Here is a painting based on this warning.
Oddly this one
proceeded well from the start. As usual I brushed in the basic shapes using
fast-drying acrylic paint. This normally prefaces repainting with oil paint but
it looked well enough to negate this need. In the end I didn't use any oil
paint at all. Wanting to bring out the woman's frock I loaded the brush with extra
paint and applied it. It created creases on the dress. I added some brighter
tones on the right of the dress to show some light and add depth. I kept
telling myself to start applying oil paints but resisted. Things reached a
level I was satisfied with so I left it. I added a few drinks which seemed to
finish the painting.
This painting
reminds me of a woman I saw in a hotel bar in London. I was staying at the big
Britannia hotel in the Docklands and thought I'd have a wander around. There
was an attractive Chinese woman on a high stool at the bar with three men in
close proximity. She was wearing a short dress and her tights-encased legs
crosses. The dress was so short you could see the black horizontal band above
the thigh area. She looked inebriated - they all did. I went for a walk around
the area to marvel at the sky-scrapers and then to the shop for milk. Upon
returning I looked into the bar area again to see the Chinese woman had somehow
toppled off the stool and was now flat on her back and semi-conscious.
This
painting will join many others in the attic. It's bigger size means the spiders
could use it as a football field. However you could buy it to line the bottom
of your gerbil's cage. It's just £32,682. I'm a little short as I was driving
along the motorway and had costly accident. I was bored enough to tip back my
head and place a Cadbury's Creme Egg on each egg. The
plan was to slowly tip my head forward and catch each egg on my tongue and eat
it. I mastered it but I nearly choked while chewing those eggs (you know how
rich they are) and crashed into a police car. The courts ordered me to buy a
new police car (£32,682.) The judge was intrigued to see if I could carry out
the egg trick in court and was so impressed he didn't issue any fines.