Artist Block?

9th May, 2009

After spending the morning gardening, I decided to continue one of my paintings. The oil painting has been worked up from sketches and ref photos made in April when I visited and walked near Ramsey, Benwick and Whittlesey. I first started the painting a few weeks back, I had already blocked in the composition and then allowed it to dry.

After painting for 3 or 4 hours I felt I really had not acheived much and came very close scraping the canvas clean or white washing it. It just was not working. Then, I decided to combine sketches of Alders (think the trees were Alders) I had made close to the same scene. I have painted three of them into the mid ground and I am pleased with the result.

Still deciding whether or not it is completed. I don’t want it to be too realistic and I intended it to be fairly loose and impressionistic.