Painting Tour

The tweets made while on the Painting Tour are being collated and presented now on one page. It includes tweets on the hashtag #paintingtour and other tweets that tell the story of the tour (where I forgot to use the hashtag or chose at the time not to swamp it with too much detail).

As the tour lasted 85 days I’ve added an index at the top of the page so that you can jump to the tweets of a particular day. Where my tweets are a response to somebody else’s, I’ve included the text of theirs rather than provide an outgoing “in response to” link.

All the photos referred to have been pulled in so as to save you clicking out to the relevant picplz, twitpic, yfrog, etc, link, though those links can also be followed. These are mostly photos taken with the phone or the tablet whilst the best photos were taken with the camera proper and not shared contemporaneously – a selection of these will be presented in their own gallery.

For readability I plan to make more changes, mostly in styling, so that the core text can be more easily followed as a continuous story. It takes a lot of time though, so bear with me.

A link to the painting tour story in tweets has been placed up on the main menu on the top navigation bar as “tweets”.

Reluctant to impact the quietly effective organic nature of the tour as it operated through social media, I didn’t jump at some opportunities for national media exposure, but here are some articles I was very happy to see:

• Irish Times Magazine True Characters
• New Tech Post Eolaí: Painting Ireland through Social Media
• Huffington Post Artist’s Social Media Tour: Pedaling, Painting & Tweeting Across Ireland
• Irish Times Painting for Supper Pays Off for Artist (scroll down)
• Irish Central Social media fuels Irish artist’s cycling odyssey
• Irish Independent Cargo Bike’s no Lightweight on the Long and Heavy Haul

Blog Posts

• The Day the Nomad Cycled By Inside View From Ireland
• @eolai #paintingtour Grannymar
• Artist Eolai visits us on his painting tour of Ireland by bicycle Arthur’s Eden
• GPS, Latitude and the Bicycle-Powered Paintingtour Inside View
• He is Home Grannymar
• Still Life with Xtracycle Every Day Adventurers
• Artist +Liam Daly meets William Butler Yeats on his #PaintingTour Micheál Walsh G+
• Day 3 @eolai Coastal Aussie
• Nomadic Update Grannymar
• @eolai may have left the house. Alive thank god! Hello My Name Is Garrett
• Painting Tour – A Flickr Photo set Irish Typepad
• And of course, the weekly summaries: Eolai’s Painting Tour The Thirsty Gargoyle

I’ll add any more articles or posts, should they appear.

There is now a gallery for all the paintings done on the 12-week Painting Tour.

You can also see most of the completed paintings on PicPlz as they were posted.

Some paintings started on the tour are still being completed. I’m adding them to the gallery as I finish them.

A quick note. I am blogging, but haven’t published any posts yet while I’m getting to grips with a new machine and a new way of doing things. But I will.

In the meantime I have been publishing photos on PicPlz and TwitPic (6 photos to date of trip).

Photos of just the completed paintings can be seen here.

Also if you look closely at this website you will notice a thingamajig on the right hand side. It displays short updates by me from the trip, most often made from the road on the bike.

You can also see those updates on twitter under the #paintingtour hashtag. If you keep an eye on that tag you will also see chat and updates (such as photos) on the trip by other people including people who have hosted me.

There are also photos on my camera proper and my tablet which I’ll be posting somewhere soon.

6 paintings have been completed, including one commission which I did on day 1, and 5 paintings for hosts.

I’ve cycled in Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow, Carlow, Kilkenny, Carlow again, Wicklow again, and Wexford.

Sketches and journal notes are also going into a sketchbook. I’ll probably show you a page or 2 at some point.

5 recordings on AudioBoo were made but 4 of them didn’t just not upload – they didn’t save. I haven’t given up though, as recording on the bike especially is just too much fun not to keep trying.

Today I’m cycling down the Wexford coast. It is, at the time of writing (6 a.m.), the 1st day of the trip so far that I do not have a host for. That’s fine. I may stop somewhere, paint a picture, then try to sell it via Twitter and Facebook to fund a B&B and dinner.

Next counties on the list are Waterford, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Clare, and Tipp. How and when I fit Laois and Offaly in will dictate schedule for Galway, Mayo, and Sligo.

In short the first 10 days have been tremendous. The people who have hosted me have all been brilliant (making it hard for me to move on) and every single cycling day has included staggering beauty. Honestly (I’ve thought about it).

Time to pack. I’m cycling in an hour. I’ll just have this pot of tea first.

In July and August, 2011, I am planning to cycle around Ireland, all of the historic 32 counties, painting as I go, with the route determined by social media – where people volunteer to host me in return for one of those paintings.

Blog

This is also where I’ll blog the trip including, if I can manage it, some audio and video clips. I’ll continue to use my regular account on twitter to tweet the trip and, I imagine, my regular account on Facebook to neglect it. Photos will appear in a variety of places depending on whether they are taken by my little phone (picplz, twitpic) or my camera proper (flickr, pix.ie). And so verbose am I that there may even be a book – or at least I plan to capture enough words for one.

Painting Tour: Hosts & Commissions

Roughly, the route will go from Dublin clockwise around the island back to Dublin, but as the 32 counties are not lined up in a convenient circle the route will involve some serious zigging and some frivolous zagging. I expect to have a significant number of hosts before the trip starts so will have a reasonable idea of the general route come Friday, July 1st, but I also expect to be soliciting hosts as I cycle and the sun is setting which will pretty much finalise the route.

Commission & Sponsor

Apart from hosting, people can also get paintings and be involved by helping me prepare. This trip has been conceived and planned without me having a penny, but there are a few things I need for the trip (e.g. a tablet, a mifi, dry bags, tyres) – so I’ll be posting details of how people can commission me to cycle to any spot on the island in order to do a painting for them, in return for €75 paid in advance to facilitate equipping me for the trip.

Charity

While the trip is not being done specifically for charity, I will be auctioning a painting from the trip for Shine and making it possible for people to donate to Shine as I cycle.