Michael Clarke Duncan

Ok, so there was still time left in the day for a portrait with the markers.  The Daredevil film was on the telly the other day and I couldn't help noticing that the late Michael Clarke Duncan, who played the Kingpin, would make a great portrait subject.

I found a great moody photo with lots of shadows and made a start by blacking out lots of shadow areas, like I did with John Paul Jones not too long ago.  But then what to do after that?  With MCD being dark skinned it would have been all too easy to reach for the brown marker and I wasn't convinced that my selection of flesh tones would really cut it, so I continued with neutral greys and ended up with something in black and white.

After thinking for a while about whether I should stop at that point, I decided that I needed some background to contrast against the white highlights on MCD's head.  I went for this metallic blue colour as it suited the monotone nature of what I'd already drawn.  But when I added the background blue, I found that I'd messed up the head shapeM which is why I ended up adding black outlines.  You can see some blue on MCD’s right jowl that was squeezing his lower head too tightly before I added the outline.

Good drawing?  Yeah.  All this work on figure drawing has improved my use of values so much that I can now do black and white drawings lime this!  The neck and body Look very MCD but I'm not convinced about the facial likeness.  There's definitely personality in there though.  This has ended up as a very sad, bluesy looking drawing as if MCD is contemplating his own mortality and a life barely lived.  He was only 54 when he died.

I'm feeling proud of this one.  It's up for sale.

Maxine

A late start in the painting today, so this will be the only one unless I decide to get the markers out and do a portrait.  Today's model is Maxine.

Most of the colour today is indigo.  I didn't fancy going 100% monotone so brought in some bright blue in places on the body and the thing she's sitting on.  And you can see I've used violet in the shadows, which was a mistake.

After my first attempt, I did two sets of touch ups.  The first was on the foot, which was the wrong shape.  The second was on the shadow, which was looking too square.

The end result is OK.  While there's too much purple in the shadow and the  hands and feet aren't perfect, the head and face works, even if it's maybe a bit too small.  The hair is particularly good but it's a shame this is something that will probably only work with these pencils and not with watercolour or markers.  The curves in the shape of her right arm look good too.

Maxine is up for sale.

Brie, Relaxed

 You know me - when it comes to this figure drawing, I like to do two in a day.  This time, the model is Brie, someone I've drawn before but not very well (https://artisticactuary.blogspot.com/2020/10/brie.html).

I started off shading Brie in willow, with some apple green and tangerine in places and poppy red in her extremely red hair.  I'm still convinced that there's lots of green in her skin tone.  The background curtains were done in charcoal grey and the foreground cloth in indigo.  I was convinced this colour scheme would be a winner.

When it came to adding the water, though, I was really disappointed.  First the willow dried to a much lighter brown than I was expecting (which I'd have known if I'd actually looked at my swatches).  So light that it couldn't compete with the foreground, let alone the hair.  And the whole one colour scheme for the model and separate individual colours for the foreground and background wasn't working.

So after leaving the work to dry, I tinkered.  First I added more shading to Brie with bark colour.  Then more shading to the foreground cloth with charcoal grey.  Then I added outlines, first in willow (will I ever learn?), then in bark.  The colours now hang together reasonably well.

The colours are good but for once the best bit about this is the head.  That eyelash is the focal point of the whole painting , making Brie look real and adding a little bit of sex appeal.  Unfortunately, though, her feet are a bit too small.  And some people will find that a turnoff.

Still, Brie's up for sale.

NMA Model 15

Today's model doesn't even have a name.  She's Model 15 from the New Masters Academy.  Great pose though.

The idea behind this one was to make it another monotone drawing with no edges and using violet as the colour.  The strategy was changed in a couple of places.  First, my pencil outline was laid on a bit too hard, making it difficult to erase, so I did go over  the outline in violet.  Second, violet on its own was looking a little boring (somehow dull browns and indigos work on their own but bright colourful colours don't) so I also added a bit of indigo, fuchsia and field green in places.  I may have put on too much pencil, so when wetting it afterwards I was especially careful to start with the contours and wrinkles that most helped define the shape.

I'm happy with this one.  I think the pose has a lot to do with that.  The things I least like are the dodgy hand (with a strand of hair looking like an extra finger) and the way that one breast looks bigger than the other but these aren’t big problems.

Oh, and as a special bonus, here's what my original drawling looked like in the inktense pencils before adding water.

I Am The Eye In The Sky

So, AA, when are we going to see what you're doing with that painting of an eye from the other day?

And why is it exactly that you're needing to practice snow scenes?

Listen, son-in-law, when you came round to help me move that old fridge outside and I said you could take away anything you might use in your art hobby, I still don't understand why you took what you did.

And hey, AA, it's been a while since we saw you really push some boundaries.

Listen guys, your questions are all about to be answered.

I went round the in laws the other day to help them move an old fridge outside the house.  The father-in-law told me that I could take away anything I wanted, thinking that one of the drawers could be useful for storing gear.  Instead, I took away a couple of glass shelves with the idea of painting on them.  Over the next couple of days while I was waiting for some new, white watercolour ground to arrive, I came up with two interesting extra ideas.  One was to have a painting of an eye stuck on the other side of the glass looking through a gap in the painting.  The other was to make it a cold, snowy scene, fitting with the whole fridge thing.

So, first I painted the eye, as described earlier (https://artisticactuary.blogspot.com/2020/10/an-eye-work-in-progress.html).

Next, surface preparation.  I cleaned the glass, then roughed up the front of it with some sandpaper, dusted it off, then applied a first coat of watercolour ground (Daniel Smith titanium white watercolour ground).  In the sanding and the grounding, I was careful to leave a gap for the eye to peek through.  The gap needed to be the right size, to let the best bits of the eye remain visible and to look like the sort of shape that you make when wiping away a hole to look through the condensation on a window.  Once dry (a 24 hour wait) I added a second coat.  After waiting another day, I taped the eye to the back of the shelf using really thick gaffer tape.

And then I was ready to go.  After yesterday's experiments, I wanted to use both salt and spattered masking fluid for falling snow.  And I'd decided to use a palette of French ultramarine, burnt sienna, quinacridone magenta and transparent yellow.  With both a warm and a cool red in there, it's been painted in a mixture of cool purple and triadic right keys.

So, masking fluid spattering first, then the sky and trees.  Wait until the paint starts to lose its shine, then straight in with the salt.  Then foreground, wait for just the right moment and, bang, salt again.  Finally I added some "superforeground" (a term I just invented) in the form of a happy tree trunk and some grasses.  I've been watching too much Bob Ross.  The grasses were added first, using paint squeezed straight out of the tube onto the palette with no water and a Terry Harrison "Merlin" brush.  The tree was painted using the same brush and only a very tiny addition of water to the four paints from the tube, and with very little mixing.  I also added a bit of snow on the tree trunks in titanium white, with some of some of the blue on top.  And after letting it all dry, I rubbed off the salt and masking fluid.

So what went well and what went badly?  As I experienced before, as a wild card at Landscape Artist Of The Year, in a post that I can't publish until the episode airs, it's hard to get dark values when painting on watercolour ground.  This worked to my advantage, with the sky and foreground coming out at sensible values, not too dark.  The superforeground has also come out at a sensible value, thanks to me using paint almost direct from the tube - something that I need to remember to do in future.  Masking fluid turns out to be quite difficult to remove when working with watercolour ground on glass - you can see a bit above the eye where I accidentally rubbed off the paint and ground.  I was lucky that this happened at a spot where there was white paper behind the glass.  If and when I paint on a fridge shelf again, I won't be using masking fluid.  And then there were the lucky accidents.  The way the colour of the snow near the eye looks like flesh tones.  The white squares on the fridge shelf, which you can see on the top half of the eye, looking like falling snow.  The brush strokes in the watercolour ground still showing up and making the painting look windy.  And the greens and reds showing up in the tree trunks.  The worst bit about the painting is the snow on the tree trunks - the painting would have been better off without it.

Overall, though, a big success.  The whole batshit mentality of it all and the amazing colours in the sky, background trees, snow, grasses and superforeground tree trunks.  It's up for sale.

Finally, here's another picture of the painting, looking more like a fridge shelf:

Three Days Of Snow

Back to painting again today and, for reasons that will become apparent, I wanted to get in some practice at snow paintings.  So I looked through the Ron Hazell (https://artisticactuary.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-artists-guide-to-painting-in.html) and Zoltan Szabo (https://artisticactuary.blogspot.com/2019/10/zoltan-szabos-70-favourite-watercolor.html) books for inspiration and came up with three ideas to try out.  Those two books, by the way, are great as reference works when you want to look for something specific.

I wanted to try out all three ideas, so decided to divide the paper into three.  Rather than using a ruler and masking tape, though, I just decided to mark out a couple of ragged divisions with masking fluid.  Quite a smart move as those jagged lines seem to make everything feel colder.  I also allowed a bit of leakage to spill over between adjacent paintings, which I'm quite pleased with.  It makes the viewer wonder whether this really is three separate paintings or a single painting with two jagged white lines obscuring most of the transitions.  Anyway, let's go through the three sub paintings.

First, the one on the left.  The snow was created using masking fluid, although I've also allowed some salt from next door to spill over.  The sky and snow a made from cerulean blue and permanent rose.  The trees use those two colours plus olive green and sap green (from the experimental palette, making their debuts).  I like the foreground and falling snow on this one but the green trees are a bit too jarring and complementary - in retrospect they'd probably have looked a lot better in a blue/purple colour.  Maybe next time.

In the middle, the sky and foreground use those old favourites French ultramarine and burnt sienna.  The trees use those same two colours plus the olive and sap greens.  The falling snow was made by sprinkling on salt.  I followed Zoltan Szabo's advice and only added the salt just as the paint started to lose its shine.  The effort put into getting the timing right was worth it.  These colours granulate really well too, which increases the impact of the salt.  I like the trees more on this one, even though the original idea was to have them in a more neutral colour with only a hint of green in the mix.  The weakest bit about this on is the hard edges along the bottom of of the shadows on the drifts.  The tops of the shadows are hard but the bottom edges need to be soft.

And then there's the third one.  A much warmer day, using some Zoltan Szabo ideas.  The sky is warm, using rose dore and Indian yellow.  The trees use those two colours plus cerulean blue and the olive and sap greens.  The foreground started with cerulean blue and rose dore all over.  The idea was to leave it to dry, dab out light areas and glaze over with a warm colour.  But, of course, rose dore is staining and as soon as  remembered this I dabbed out the light areas.  Finally I glazed over the foreground with a very thin layer of Indian yellow.  And this is what I ended up with.  I think it works.  The granulation of the cerulean blue just below the tree line is great.

Overall, I'm definitely happy with this one.  And it's been sold.

Annie Mac

Portrait Artist Of The Week is back.  This is supposed to be Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac.  Believe it or not, I actually knew who this was - there used to be a Radio 1 ad before films at the cinema and Annie was in it.

Annie had a bit of a greeny yellow parlour to her skin today, maybe because of the lighting.  This was a great excuse to use some of those colours in grey more shadowy skin tones.  The purple on the background was chosen to clash agains and energise those yellows and greens.

The likeness isn’t great.  In fact, with its 1960s/70s feel, it came out looking more like my mother in her 20s.  Which is a bit spooky given that today would have been her 75th birthday.

And someone else just pointed out that this also looks like Rizzo from Grease.  That's a good call Kris.

My excuse is that this was all a bit rushed, with me needing to finish early and watch this guy playing football.  Portrait Artist Of The Week was so much easier to participate in during lockdown proper.

Michael

All my figure drawing so far has been of naked females and there are a lot of people out there who would rather see naked male bodies, so I thought I'd pick a male model for a change.  This is Michael.

Like with the seated version of Aubrey yesterday, I've gone for a single colour.  Today it's indigo.  Somehow, this doesn't seem to scale the same heights as Aubrey.  While the musculature is good and the hair fantastic, the hands and toes aren't great.  And you can't see it here but the figure is badly placed on the paper with a big gap above his head and the toes almost touching the bottom.  The biggest difference between this and Aubrey, though is that Aubrey had more lost edges to her.  Maybe if there wasn't a hard edge to Michael's right thigh and no indication of where his thigh stopped and the background began, it might look better.

This one's up for sale.

An Eye (A Work In Progress)

 

Today I painted an eye.  This is part of a larger work, the full details of which I'll keep a secret for now.  I can't get any further with that project today without doing a bit of shopping first.

Anyway, the eye is looking good.  Most of it uses only Winsor red, cerulean blue and raw sienna, these being very close to a set of three that the late Charles Reid recommended for skin tones.  Charles recommended cadmium red rather than Winsor red but I thought I'd take the easy option and choose three colours that I already had in halfpans in my experimental palette of 24.  The only other colour in there is viridian, which was mixed with the red for the black in the pupil.  Any green in the iris comes only from the blue and the raw sienna.

Watch this space to find out what's going to happen to this eye!

Aubrey, Seated

As I said in the previous post, it was time to do something different with the figure drawing rather than just turning the handle on the sausage machine and churning out the same painting over and over again, albeit with different models in different poses.  So I thought I'd do two things differently.

The first difference was to try out something recommended by both Kagan McLeod and Bill Buchman.  The idea is to do all the shading and texture first, then add the outline afterwards in big sweeping, energetic curves.

The second difference was to just use one colour, putting more importance on both observation and use of values rather than just looking for all the "love the colours" feedback.  Observation and use of values are the things I need to get better at to become a better artist.

The model is Aubrey again.  Not a deliberate repetition - I choose the subject matter based on the poses rather than on the identity of the models.

I actually cheated a bit and sketched out some rough outlines in pencil before rubbing them out until they were barely visible.  One thing I've discovered is that the "outliner pencil" in the inktense sets isn't a normal pencil and is very difficult to rub out, so I've started doing outlines with normal pencils.  And then I did all sorts of shading using quite a neutral colour and trying to distinguish between dark and light values.  It looks like I've managed to get in four values here, one of them being the white paper.  The final stage is to wet  the pencils.  I was really careful here to not wet lighter areas immediately after wetting darker without cleaning the brush.  It's very easy to contaminate one area with the colour or value from another.  In my colourful figure drawings it's not a big issue but it could have caused problems with this one.

The final stage was going  to be to add that sweeping, energetic outline to the drawing but I changed my mind.  This looks great as it is, leaving the viewer with the job of imagining the edges for himself.

I rate this one a big success.  It's up for sale.

Aubrey, Standing

Back to figure drawing with the inktense pencils.  This is Aubrey.

To be honest, this feels a bit lazy.  I've done so many of these figures using similar colour schemes.  It's not taking me forwards in any way churning out the same old stuff.  It even feels like a bit of a cheat using a pose like this with the body arched backwards showing off the breasts after a similar sort of pose proved to be popular on Facebook.  And the background curtains are becoming a bore.

Still, a decent painting.  The worst thing about it is probably the curtains where the light looks like it's coming from the left when it should be from the right.

For my next figure drawing, I need to do something different.  Challenge myself.

<Edit: I originally put this one up for sale but looking at what I've managed to produce as at September 2021,  this is a long way short of my best work.>

Landscape Artist Of The Year 2021

I've got my entry in early for Landscape Artist Of The Year 2021.

I needed to submit a landscape painting.  I chose Sedona, Arizona (https://artisticactuary.blogspot.com/2020/09/sedona-arizona.html).

I was allowed to submit a second landscape if I wanted to, so why not?  I went for Lancashire Sunset (https://artisticactuary.blogspot.com/2020/07/lancashire-sunset.html).

And then I was allowed to submit a third painting, which didn't even need to be a landscape.  Again, I couldn’t say no, so picked (Two Of) The Hateful Eight (https://artisticactuary.blogspot.com/2020/06/two-of-hateful-eight.html).

The three paintings show off how, on a good day, I can make the colours zing.  That's the common theme across the three of them.  And the Hateful Eight painting shows, in the background, how I can keep the colours calm and under control if I need to.

I also provided a link to this blog, so if you're one of the judges reading this, hello!

The Cheetah Woman

After the painting experiment two days ago that I unwrapped yesterday (https://artisticactuary.blogspot.com/2020/10/another-abstract-underpainting.html) I had an overnight think and decided that I was going to press ahead and turn the abstract into the cheetah woman.  Here's what I did today:

- I masked out the cheetah woman with masking tape!  Crazy idea but there were straight lines in the painting already and I wanted more.  There's a nice positively painted negative triangle between the head and the supporting arm.

- Negatively painted the cheetah woman using the French ultramarine along the bottom.  I decided to let this blue also go into the white band below it, which I later regretted.

-  Negatively painted her along the top, initially in raw sienna.  I swept the strokes upwards to look like grasses.  The raw sienna was looking a bit monotone, so I added in the viridian, ultramarine and quinacridone magenta in places.  I was careful not to negatively paint the feet, not just because that would have been difficult but also because odd lost edge is good.

- Tried drawing tree branches in the top right and top left with masking fluid for variety and painting over them.  These didn't really work out right, so I painted some foliage over them.  This also covered a lot of the white band in the top left.

- Added the usual finishing touches: lots of salt in the foliage, grass and shadows.  If it works, great.  If it doesn't, then not a disaster.  And, because things were looking a bit dull and dark, I spatttered over my usual opaques: cadmium red, cadmium yellow, cerulean blue and titanium white.  I was careful to cover up the cheetah woman while doing the spattering.

- And at the end of all this, the thing I was most disappointed with was the former white bands that were now painted over but still visible.  They looked like a mistake that I was trying to disguise.  So I painted over them with titanium white to bring them back.  But they still didn't look quite right, looking like bands for the sake of bands.  So I encouraged them to bleed downwards into the paint below, in what turned out to be quite pleasing patterns.  And I added a touch of ultramarine because white with a bit of blue shadow looks whiter than white on its own.

So, job done.  Is it better than its abstract predecessor?  I don't know and don't really want to think about that anyway.  Is it any good?  Well I say it is.  It's crazy bonkers.  There are so many questions that this painting raises.  What is that leopard woman thing?  Does it have legs or does it have the body of a worm or a fish?  Is that grass behind it or flames?  What are the white bands?  Wooden beams?  Something covered in snow?  What are those cabbage lines?  What's that spotty triangle in the top left corner?  And do I have this painting the right way round?  I've not even looked at the other three orientations.

This one was gifted to my sister in law.

Another Abstract Underpainting

The markers and inktense pencils haven't really been working out for me over the last week or so, so I thought I'd better brave the cold outside and get back to the watercolours.

This is going to be another painting that starts off as an abstract and that maybe turns into something more representational. But this time, I thought I'd go all out on textures.  So, to start with, I went for granulating colours: French ultramarine, raw sienna and viridian.  I also threw in burnt sienna to keep things grounded and earthy and because it makes such a good double act with the ultramarine.  And I included quinacridone magenta because the green needed an intense complimentary to keep it under control.

I prepared the paper first with a spattering of  masking fluid, trying to get a bit of a diagonal pattern going, to put a bit of energy into the painting.  I put on a couple of strips of masking tape because I was throwing everything but the kitchen sink at this painting.  They were put in positions that added to the diagonal energy from the masking fluid.

Then I put on the paint, making sure it was thick enough for the resulting painting to be able to stand up for itself rather than being doomed to being an underpainting.

And, finally, I added bubble wrap, French stick wrapper, a net bag that full heads of garlic come in, cabbage leaves and a bit of salt in  the only remaining empty space.  Then I weighed it all down with bricks and left it overnight.

I opened it all up this morning.  There is a video of this happening but you'll have to search for me on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3304681352957790 ) to see it as it was too big to be put up on blogger.  So how did all the textural tools work out?

- The colours definitely worked.  Lots of granulation.  Burnt sienna mixes well with absolutely everything. And the green and magenta vibrate strongly when on the same page together.

- Masking fluid spatters always work.

- The masking tape has a weird effect.  The photo of the painting looks like the painting is at an angle, with the two corner triangles being a work surface under the painting.  It adds a tension.  I'm not sure whether that's a good or a bad thing.  And there's been some leakage under the tape, especially in the bottom right but that's not a big deal.

- The salt hasn't done much this time.  Just a little bit of crystalisation in the brown at the top, just to the right of the tape.  It hasn't really done anything in the green and purple just below it.

- The cabbage produced those branches in the top left below the tape and the blobs in the top right corner.  They were always going to look like bare trees and it feels like a bit of an easy cop out to me, especially if they end up as trees in the final painting.  Maybe a I should have tried one of the leaves the other way up for a bit of variety.  Still, every cabbage leaf on the paper is one less on my dinner plate.

- The bubble wrap was used in the top left and bottom right, producing the expected result in one place but something different in the other.

- The French stick wrapper took up all the bottom right quadrant except for the triangle in the corner.  It produced a similar effect to clingfilm as usual, but was better for the environment.

- And the garlic bag produced the "bacteria under the microscope" effect around the middle of  the bottom half.

So far, this has been pretty successful.  I now need to think for the rest of the day about whether to leave the painting as it is (tempting!) or to turn it into something else.  If I do change it, the most likely plan at the moment is to keep it this way round and to turn it into a sleeping cheetah woman.  There's a cat-like face that the French stick wrapper has produced, along maybe with an elbow to lean on.  And there's a red shape that could be the bottom half of a torso and a pair of legs.  It would have to be a cheetah woman and not a leopard woman because of the pattern of the spots in the top left corner.

I still have time to think about this though.

Ayame

Back to the figure drawing and inktense pencils.  I wanted to come up with something with lots of white highlights on the flesh.  And at the same time, I thought I'd do something with winky blues and violets (with a tiny touch of red) rather than keeping churning out rainbow people.  Oh, and I deliberately picked out a pose that would allow me to put in a huge sweeping line.

When I finally master the knack of being able to lay down energetic gesture drawings that are in proportion, I'll be the master of figure drawing.  But I'm still having trouble with proportions.  Despite taking a few attempts and using pencil measurements, this is still not right.  The head and arm look too small for the body.  And all the corrections mean that the picture has lost all the energy that was in the original gesture drawing.

Catch this one out of the corner of your eye and it looks like a dog.  So I'm wondering whether I've caught Ayame part way through transforming into a werewolf.

<Edit: I originally put this one up for sale but looking at what I've managed to produce as at September 2021,  this is a long way short of my best work.>

Stephen Hawking

After John Paul Jones came out so well a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to have another go at drawing a portrait with markers by concentrating on shadow and value patterns rather than on facial features.  I found a black and white portrait often late Stephen Hawking that I thought might make a good subject.

So I started this all off with neutral colours and came up with a black and white portrait.  Looking at that,  I thought it needed a bit of colour but not excessive amounts.  So I added in some flesh tones, blue on the clothes and green on the cushion.  I also added some stars to the sky using a white gel pen.

The drawing was instantly recognisable as Hawking (and still is) but something wasn't quite right.  I thought it that his left jowl was a bit too baggy, so I went over part of it with a black marker and incorporated the black into the shadow on the cushion. The neutral colours do make him look pretty ill but there's life and intelligence in those eyes.  It's a tough decision but Professor Hawking's not going in the shop window.

Did I ever tell you I queued up behind Stephen Hawking at a cash point once?  Barclays in Market Hill, Cambridge.  It's a clothes shop now.

Jenni

The second bit of figure drawing of the day.  This time it's Jenni.

Back to the colours that work best for me at this sort of thing, with lots of violet and yellow.  After the curtain worked so well last time round, I've added the box Jenni's sitting on and a shadowy background.

The best thing about this one is that there's a tiny bit of Matisse in there.  Something about the sweep of the line in her right arm.

Otherwise, not great.  The head is too green compared to the rest of the body.  And the indigo outlines aren’t really working out.  Maybe I'm stuck in that horrible place between accuracy and gestural energy.  Neither one nor the other.  Either of the extremes (going all out on energy and not caring about accuracy or all out on accuracy and not caring about energy) would be so much better than this middle ground which lacks both.

When I'm famous and sought after, pieces like this will be worth a fortune but for now, this one isn't good enough to go in the shop window.

Brie

It's cold and wet outside, so no chance of any painting.  Instead, I'm indoors with the inktense pencils and plenty of Models just waiting to be drawn.  Today it's Brie.

I picked this pose because I wanted to have a go at drawing a back.  While the back came out generally OK, I think this one suffers a bit from not being a very energetic pose - there are no sweeping action lines there to grab the imagination.

I also wanted to have a go at mainly using green.  I guess it came out OK.  My figures that use blues and purples look better but I'm not sure whether that's down to the choices of colour or the better poses.

And finally, just to be different, I used a charcoal grey pencil to add shadows and a curtain backdrop.

Another highlight is the left foot - I like how there's a blurred edge between the two feet.  Maybe it's a message that I need to let the edges speak for themselves and not add in these sweeping indigo edge lines afterwards.

This one feels like a warmup to my second drawing of the day.  I'm starting to understand why figure drawing classes work the way they do, starting off with loads of short poses so people can get into the swing of things.

<Edit: I originally put this one up for sale but looking at what I've managed to produce as at September 2021, this is a long way short of my best work.>