Well, I have completed page two, or image two or whatever!

I am not completely happy with it, but that is the risk i took by painting it directly into the book rather than sticking in a painting done on other paper. I am wary that i will be sticking in paper for other pages and don’t want it to get so chunky it won’t close, so that was why i took the risk this time. I also used watercolours… which i have not done since i was a teenager and they are a bit tricky sometimes!

So i was inspired by a programme on BBC4 on Katsushika Hokusai that i saw the other night, about his picture The Great Wave off Kanagawa. I have a calendar with this image in it, as i love it and bought it particularly for this image. Here is a photo of it to jog your memory:

hokusai-wave

A bad photo, but i have no scanner!

And here is my picture i just finished, i have called it Hokusai Gulls:

hokusai-gulls

I thought his picture could do with some bird life!! So i swapped the fishermen for gulls…

The card of the book is not really meant for painting on and evidently has some residue of glue or something in places, which affected the ability of the paint to stick: it works in places, but maybe not in others! But in spite of all this, i feel a sense of acheivement today, it is not bad for a first bold attempt straight into the book. If i am going to fill the book any time soon, i cannot be a perfectionist about it!