Masoala illustration finished...yay

I had to make a couple of changes, if you compare it with the earlier versions (see a few posts down) I've changed the pool in the foreground to an inlet of the sea. As was pointed out to me, there isn't much point in keeping your dugout canoe on a pond when there's the Indian Ocean just round the corner...
It also makes more sense like this in terms of perspective and colour, I think.
Next I need to scan it, but that's a big job, because it has to be done in two bits and stitched together.

Right now I'm off to pack for a weekend in Devon : ) great, except for the awful drive down. Was thinking about when we were living in Vienna, if you drove 7 or 8 hours in any direction you'd get into at least one other country. Here, we get to pass Birmingham at just about rush hour.

Recent oil landscape

I recently completed this oil landscape for my friend Giselle. She used to live near Galgate and wanted a picture which would remind her of the area. I cycled and walked around a lot looking and photographing, with enjoyment but little inspiration, until one morning I found this wall curving over the fields, and used it as my starting point. The painting is a sort of composite image of the upper valley of the river Conder, which downstream, flows right past Giselle's old house.

It's painted mainly using palette knives, which I love. The tone of the painting is deliberately quite flat, my main interest being in the shapes and colours of the fields.