Sketching ideas and resisting realism

I do love walking in the countryside and along the coast, and I take many photos along the way and sketch the feel of some of the places from memory and imagination afterwards - sometimes straight after, sometimes months afterwards. It's the feel of the place that is important in my paintings and I don't really want to create a pristine replica of what I saw and what everybody else can see (if only they'd walk too).

We were given a Digital Photo Frame for Christmas and it sits quietly in the lounge flicking through photos that are far more interesting than what's on telly. So here's an idea - and it can be adapted for use with an ordinary 'slide show' on a computer. Set the slides to change every ten seconds or maybe 15, whatever suits you, and sit with your smallest sketchpad and a soft pencil, making rapid drawings of the compositions that appeal to you or which most stand out.

If you have the slides on a continual repeat then you can return to any drawings that need a bit of a reminder about colour or composition. For the above painting (at the underpainting stage shown above) I had written notes on the drawing to remind myself of the sharp contrast between sky and trees, and the importance of the angles of the fence posts in the foreground.

You'll soon see the finished painting on Affordable British Art : I think it will be called 'Warm are the Still and Lucky Miles', after a poem by W.H Auden.

The rapid-fire drawings mean that you produce lots and it really loosens you up so that realism is outweighed by the feeling in the scene.