It is with relief that the air shows coming to an end. If you have the attended any shows this year you will know the weather has not been kind to us to say the least - lets hope next year will bring some good weather. I now focus attending events of an indoor nature and a list of venues can be seen on the website.

I have just been speaking to Stuart Stephenson OBE, Chairman of the Lincolnshire Lancaster Association. We will be getting our heads together to discuss ideas for their 2009 Christmas card - we both have a few thoughts on the new image. This will be my forth year painting for the LLA and I now have received the title of “LLA Official Artist” of which I am very proud, a well respected and successful organisation raising money to keep the wonderful aircraft of the Battle of Britain Memorial flight in the air.

In the studio work has been progressing on the Grand Slam painting and I can announce the painting is finished. It's a difficult decision for an artist knowing when the final application of paint has been delivered but the painting is now with my printer and I will be including this print on the website when it becomes available. The print image size will be approx. 24” x 15 ½”.

You will note that compared to the previous showing of the image in the September news letter, one or two rather interesting things have happened. Firstly I painted out the DB tractor and repainted it a little smaller. The tractor isn’t as large as I thought … boo! This is indeed one of the difficult things about painting a canvas that contains several major elements that can’t be physically put together for the purpose of compiling a composition, ie aircraft / bomb trolley / tractor. People are easy as all their heads are on the horizon line no matter were they are in the scene, so long as they are all about the same height of course. I have added the trees on the right to add a little interest in the sky at this point. Adding the sergeant with the bike plus the erk poking around at the front of the tractor along with the trees, balances up the interest more evenly around the canvas. I have cleaned up the texture of the ground just a tad. Maybe it was a little untidy before! For anybody who is knowledgeable of the Grand Slam trolley, I have put the rear wheels at full lock to assist in the accurate alignment of the bomb. There is a wheel to turn for this purpose at the rear of the trolley, but I have left the guy out who would normally be seen to be doing this job, as I felt at this particular location of the image it was important to actually see the full profile of the fin/rudder and the distance behind it. Well this was a wordy progress breakdown; I think there are enough comments and tips there for that to be the ‘Art Tip of the Month’, call it composition tips!

Another image at the printers is “The Returning Hero” image size 15” x 9 ½” again this will be added to the website shortly.

Work is continuing on the painting for the Royal Artillery. I am pleased with the progress and have been taking photos at various stages so you can monitor the progress yourself.

The content has to be stretched out to both extremities of the horizon line, but I am at present waiting for more info to come through. I would love to see a military vehicle somewhere between the tower and the radar unit in the foreground with a couple or so of soldiers disembarking and going over towards the radar installation. The ladders look as though they are hanging in mid air at the moment, which they are in fact, but there will be platforms to stand on to get to the first step! The position, size and angle of the Herc. has yet to be decided. It is a very technical thing to paint but I love doing this sort of thing as it brings the technical illustrator out of me. It is becoming more obvious that a trip out there for the next painting will be necessary.

Almost finished is a commissioned painting of a Halifax Bomber flying over the north coast of the Flamborough Head. Just about to add a Wellington into the scenario and hope to have this completed in the not too distant future. I’ll show this next time.

A new painting which I will be demonstrating in Scotland is a landscape featuring a canal scene. Again this is a commissioned piece, one that I am looking forward to, bringing my landscape artistry to the fore.