Michael Philately..Now there's a man who makes his living from stamps!

The dark cloud has passed and the real Niall is back!!

Working on my picture today I realised I was actually doing something I've never done before. Look at the figure in the background on the left. She is probably the first 'impressionist' styled person in one of my pictures. The original photo that I am working from has all background subjects in very deep shadow. I've decided to lighten these shades because the figures are so interesting.

Talking to my class today, I was explaining the development of 'pointillism' throught the Impressionist period. How the 'experiments' of Paul Cezanne influenced the accepted style of using blocks or small areas of colour often applied unmixed to the canvas had been refined by Seurat. He tookit to unseen extremes using small dots or 'points' of colour. Sometimes reffered to as 'Divisionisim' the technique was used to limited degree by Van Gogh too. I showed the children a part of a painting by Seurat called : 'Invitation to the side show' 1887. They laughed!..it was lovely to hear..I didn't stop them..I said that laughter and joy were the best things to inspire in a viewer.

Tonight the Salsa class was fantastic..I've been practising in our Kitchen..sometimes with Jan but more often alone. I was detirmined to get it right this week. Suddenly it was all clear..the steps meant something and I could do it..it seemed so basic when I thought about it..in fact it brought to mind learning to ride a bike...so armed with this new understanding I was transformed at the class..I could do it!!!!

I often wonder where my dark times come from..it's almost always after an event where I've had to be a bigger 'me'..speaking to hundreds of people often repeating the same things..theorising, lapsing into pretention..( moi? ), then getting back to 'normal' with the mundanity of life (the bits I love) it's as if I been someone else for a few days. The real me is the man behind the drawing board, venturing out to buy a paper, pick his daughter up from school, cook the tea and sneak the odd half hour of drawing in between youth club drop offs and pick ups, Neighbours on TV, prompting my sons to do their homework and a million other things.

Speak to you again tommorow.

By the way..Jan says "Hello world!"