Moorland Oil

Hi there.

I told you in the last post that despite a lack of picture evidence, I was still working away, and I can now tell you that I have finished my latest oil work. This one is a very small moorland scene, complete with a couple of sheep and a drystone wall, very loose like the last one, but this does seem to be my developing style.

Like may artists, having a style is something that often does not occur naturally, and it cannot be developed overnight. You have to get used to sketching and drawing in the first place, to have a sense of perspective, balance and tone, and even then you have to grasp the materials you are using and learn their characteristics in differing situations, methods and application.

Finally it seems that at last I can say to myself that I am "getting there". It is something that I do take great pride and care in; I don't want to churn out endless pieces of inferior work just for the sake of it. That is false, both to any prospective purchaser, and to myself, and is not a road that I will knowingly go down. Each of my works are individual - nothing is printed or copied - each work is unique, and will remain so. There will be times in the future I will see something I did a few years back and think "erm, that's what I did, right". Hopefully I will be able to look at it and see how it could be improved, and how far I have improved. I said before - we all live and learn.

This weekend my wife and I, along with 2 very dear close friends are going away, so the work has some time to dry, though even next week it will still be wet in places, but by then I may be able to get some sort of frame for it. Probably not the right one, but at least you will have a better understanding of it, and it will look so much better for having a frame round it just for photographic purposes.

Hopefully some of you may have noticed the new blog layout, and I hope you like it. My hand goes up though to say I was actually playing around with it, and lost the previous one, so we all have this through default!

Whatever your art, enjoy it.

Paul