A couple of weeks ago a lady came in to the gallery who had just visited Catrigg Force in all of its summer glory and wondered if I would do a painting of the waterfall with all of the trees in leaf. I pondered on this for a while and dragged my son for a stroll up there last Sunday to gather some material for a studio painting.
Now I have sketched and painted this wonderful place numerous times, so I didn't bother with a plein air study as I reckon I have enough of those, but with this painting I wanted something different in that rather than an emulation of a photograph (which is difficult to achieve from a distance given the amount of greenery) I wanted to go for a more of a fantasy piece, an unachievable view which you can only get without the aid of a chainsaw.
Equipped with numbers of photos I built up a collage of and some thumbnails with numbers referencing the individual photos for specific items of interest.
So by the end of the day I had managed to get the first acrylic block in stage completed, and hopefully after a couple of glasses of wine it will still appeal to me. The problem with this studio is there are way too many distractions...
So with the final acrylic block in finished, now comes the important 'mulling it over with a glass of wine stage' before I proceed with the oils...
Chin chin...