Learning to paint Roses and Castles was what kept me sane over lockdown. Almost anything can be spruced up by painting it with canal roses, even the water butts in the garden, as you can see. Most of these have now been sold, but there’s a box and a heart still left in my etsy shop, and new things underway.
In June 2022, my son bought a narrowboat. It was a bit of a fixer-upper and one of the things it needed was a whole new paint job, so I decided to move to the next level and learn signwriting/signpainting, so that I could paint the boat’s name on the side when the new paint job was finished.
I signed up for Paul Myerscough’s Sign Painter’s Academy and have been busy practicing my sign writing ever since. This is much harder! I can see why Roses & Castles is a folk art while sign writing is a professional one. But progress has been made, and I should soon be producing signs as well as roses 🙂
