The Start of a Beautiful Summer.

I've been back in Devon for 2 weeks now. I'm enjoying spending time with family, seeing old friends and it's lovely to have a break from city life, back in sleepy Totnes.

But I haven't been relaxing to much. I'm fortunate enough to have plenty of summer work in my old retail job to replenish the bank account a little. It's certainly a change of pace from daily life as an artist at university but I feel financial independence and security are fundamental to performing to the best of my ability during my second year of studies.

And more good news, I was able to get in to an 8 week life drawing class that slots neatly into my summer plans. The tutor, models and some of the students are friends from a course I took last year so it's great to revisit life drawing and catch up.

Here's one from this weeks sessions.

Oh and I finished a painting. Not normally a big deal, but this was a long one. A few weeks ago I thought to myself 'I should work on a very large, very long painting as an exercise in patience and managing a single lengthy piece of artwork.'

I chose to do a virtual plein air as I have found the group a great source of inspiration lately and I can easily break up a large landscape in to manageable 'chunks'. Many many hours later, with sore eyes, hands and face, this is the result. 

A 5000 pixel wide (click for full resolution), virtual plein air 
in the mountains of Santa Cruz, Argentina.

Thankfully, I'm pretty pleased with it.