Watching Paint Dry

Despite the fact I clearly state on my leaflet that I have The Hut open between 10.30am and 12.30pm each day, on Thursday I had to shut up shop to head over to William Neal’s talk about his new book, Watching Paint Dry.

William has been a professional artist for many years. Back in the 70s he designed album covers for Emerson Lake and Palmer, in the 90s he was painting Galloway landscapes, and over the past few years he has moved into abstract works. This new book is a history of his life and work and includes many wonderful images including a special limited edition print to go specifically with this book.

And the cover photo is one of mine.



I did a photo shoot with William a couple of years ago, and he had the idea of taking a photo of him sitting at the easel, like a traditional artist painting a landscape, only with one of his abstract works under his brush. We then worked on it together using selective colour editing and putting in a moon, which is a feature of many of his landscape paintings. Basically, he came at it with the eye of someone who has designed album covers.

The photo ended up as the opening image on his website, and now the cover of his book.

So there was no way I was going to miss that one. Even though it meant having to turn away a couple of potential faces who wanted to see my studio because I was running late.

Rather nicely, William introduced me to the crowd there to hear him speak, which gave me the opportunity to pitch for more faces for the project, and several people came over to The Hut afterwards to stare down the lens of my camera, including William himself



Next up, Chasing Elaine C. Smith – when I can find a moment to write about it.

In the meantime, do check the Facebook or Flickr photo collections for the latest images.

Although as I write this, Flickr has decided to not upload any images from me this morning, so check the Facebook link first. I’ll try again with Flickr this evening.