Malvern Hills from Sink Farm Lane

About 5.00 pm Saturday at Sink Farm, Hangmans Lane, Hanley Castle. About twenty  cows surrounded me at the start (quite intimidating!!), but they soon got bored watching and wandered off towards the barns and vanished, milking time. I went back for an hour today . The sky was somewhat different, however reworking a bit the next day certainly helps to consolidate the piece. Painting into the sun creates its problems, with light changing by the minute but I was trying a system of mixed optical grey, it tends to restrain the colour so works well in this instance as the colour gets bleached out in this type of lighting situation with the sun popping in and out of the clouds.

Top of Lavington Hill - in progress

Oil on canvas 20" x 16" Working on  a larger format, 'en plein air'.
The edge of Salisbury plain, looking West, with strange light/colour effects in the sky ..... There's  a also a compositional challenge here ... I wanted to convey something of the richness of a roadside verge, some sunlight  hitting  a patch of brambles etc.. Below shows the progression of the work.