Cooking with ... oils

I'm getting to really like oils now. Despite the fact that watercolour is my first and true love, I like the fact that you can take your time with oils. There's no stress and you can correct mistakes as you go along. This one is done in  a different style to my last post. Rather than bold impasto strokes with hog brushes on primed board, I used softer acrylic and watercolour brushes on W&N oil paper and added Liquin to Artisan water soluble paints to get a better flow and a (hopefully) faster drying time. I took my time with this and I think it shows :)

I used a reference photograph taken one evening at sunset last winter as I was on the way home from work. The mist was rolling across the flood meadows and the dark low skyline of the neighbouring Roman town of Godmanchester just looked too good to miss. I thought at the time that it would make a good subject and so it was nice to finally get around to painting it.

I had a go at scanning this in using a pair of bulldog clips to hold the wet painting about 10mm above the bed of the scanner but it was so badly out of focus that I had to resort to using my camera. The rain is clearing and the heatwave approacheth .. off to the East Anglian coast tomorrow with my bucket, spade and a sketchbook ... with a bit of luck :)

Misty meadows, oil on paper, 7" x 10"