A minute of your time ...

Well, 56 seconds actually, which is as long as it will take to watch this time lapse video of your's truly painting the first pass of 'Goya's Ghosts', next up in the 'History Painting' series. Eagle-eyed viewers will probably also be able to spot 'Girl With a Pearl Earring' dangling from the top left of the screen (there should be decent pictures of all the recent work up on the site soon and probably a bit of a redesign too).

I've not posted a video like this before for a couple of reasons. Firstly because, to my mind at least, there's an almost inevitable guilt by association with the whole 'can you see what it is yet?' school of TV painting. I for one am certainly old enough to remember Rolf Harris on a Saturday night with the dancers of the 'Young Generation' sat around gazing adoringly as he wielded his enormous paintbrush. Ah! the seventies 'It's a Knockout', 'Jim'll Fix It' what happy, innocent days! 

The second reason is mainly, laziness. While it would have been technically achievable a while ago it was frankly too much like hard work, too many work arounds and fiddly bits of file conversion etc. However I bought myself a new toy at Christmas, a Blackberry playbook (and yes I've heard all the jokes, so let's not get into that here, it might not be an ipad but it was a third of the price and does everything I want it to, mainly) and I've just got round to downloading the camera upgrade app that makes producing video in general and time lapse in particular a whole lot less of a faff. 
Given that I basically just sat the thing on a flat surface and pointed it in vaguely the right direction I'm counting this first example as a qualified success. I'll give some thought to sorting out the angles and the lighting properly for the next one. In the meantime, 'share and enjoy.'