My Summary of the amazing Musicathon and my painting day

Following on from my post announcing what I was planning to do, here is my initial summary of the event from my perspective. Firstly it is very important to say that my involvement was a very small part of an amazing achievement by David Stanley and Liam Ambrose, who completed, in fine style, 24 hours of continuous music playing! It was all to raise funds for the mencap music school, and the music man project soon to be starting. The video below is produced by Paul Carpenter who is making a Documentary about the music school, and yes the middle aged Artist you get a glimpse of is yours truly!

So I was in place to start my Sunrise to Sunset painting challenge in time for the sun,  5.45 am
Below is the first painting.,

Next few paintings

The light was just amazing on the day, perhaps a bit worrying for the musicians but an Artists delight! I asked for cloud and light effects to paint and that it just what I got! When you are outdoors painting you realise why England is known for watercolour painting. I will be writing more about the idea of painting like this to help a charity event and also to gain a little exposure to your Art, why not? It was very well received although I have to say before I went onto the pier at around 2pm I was starting to wonder if I would look a bit of a fool. However I need not have worried, people really appreciated what I was trying to achieve.

I clip mounted the paintings very simply, having cut the paper mounts in advance so was able to present them reasonably well. The clip mounts were only £1.00 each. I wanted to keep the price low enough that it would be a price people may have in their wallet or purse. I sold them at £20.00 each. 8 on the day and 8 orders! When I realised on the Saturday that I would sell out, I decided a good approach would be to bring along on the Sunday, some photos of the previous days cloud and light effects to turn into paintings. So I took orders in that way. All the money went into the collection buckets that saved me having to worry about that, I made out receipts so I could track how it had gone. A handy device I would recommend to others thinking of doing this,  a folding 'sack barrow' to carry your gear, you can see mine in the photo below.

The real stars of the show though were of course the Mencap music school students themselves, it really was, as always, an absolute delight to see them performing for us. The video below shows the final moments of the event.

So in summary, I had a fantastic time and would (and will!) do it again in a heartbeat.