Here we are, the beginning of Autumn, as an artist my favourite month for gathering new material for paintings, as the leaves on the trees begin to turn from lush green to the autumnal shades from yellow to brown, what an array of colour to work with. Some of my favourite landscapes have been a simple composition, a country lane etc. which is enhanced by the fallen leaves. I hope I get the time to fit in one of these landscapes before winter creeps in. The ever changing season makes me feel how lucky we are to have this beautiful palette of colour around us and for me to be able to catch it in a painting. Of course there are some disadvantages to this time of the year and my main bugbear is the shortened days of natural day light for my working day. Despite having a large sky light above my easel in the studio it’s of no benefit when we get into winter and the good natural light is beginning to diminish by 3.30pm.

So what’s on the easel at this moment? I am into my final day of the “Grand Slam”. It now looks like an active airfield with the addition of ground crew busily working around the airframe. I will include a finished image next month.

My second painting on the easel (struggling to stay on it due to it’s size 5’ x3’) is the first painting for the Royal Artillery. I have finished the sky and waiting for this to dry completely before moving on to the exciting detail. My art tip for this month will include how to achieve this sky effect, notice the changing colour bands as you look down the canvas from the dark blue at the top and then in to the distance and pollution (dusty haze) caught in the sky on the horizon line. It’s not achieved in one go, I had to work on this a few times before I was happy with the result. The painting will depict their Phalanx rapid fire radar guided computer controlled (phew!) gun. The facility comprises two major components, the radar guidance system and the actual gun. They are manufactured by different companies and I am requested to paint a picture of each. I have a wad of photos that I can work from so the trip to Basra will not be necessary.

A company has approached me for the release of some aviation images to be reproduced on tee shirts. I look forward to having these quite soon on the gift section. Also on the gift section currently available, is a range of miniature images double mounted, backed, personally signed and sealed in a cellophane wrapper - designed to fit a standard frame size of 8” x 10”. This is an ideal inexpensive gift item at £6.50 inc. postage.

The original pencil sketch showing Colin Gary’s Spit. after the aileron has been shot away is illustrated in this update. As previously mentioned it is priced at £300 and is a very collectable item. Gray was the highest scoring New Zealander during WWII.

To finish this newsletter I would just like to thank you for all the kind messages I have received about the monthly newsletter, it’s good to know it is appreciated.

Application of paint is still on the agenda, and here I will show how I create a steady blend from relatively dark blue down to the hazy horizon colour. This is in fact the sky background for one of the Basra Army canvases. The paint is initially applied with the palette knife, number 1 in the photo. This is like a small trowel and delivers quite a large quantity of paint in one go.

The resulting effect of this is as in the photo showing the horizontal bands of colour. These bands are then blended out into each other using the stiff broad brush no. 2 in the photo. We will at this stage have a very rough texture to the paintwork which at this stage we do not want as we are trying to capture the essence of a smooth delicate sky effect. All this is finally smoothed out using a fan brush which is specially designed to blend and smooth out rough work.

The finished result is as the photo. below Smooth paintwork reflects the fact that we are looking into the distance, rough paintwork helps to give the impression of looking at something close to as in the grass on the runway of the ‘Grand Slam’ painting.

Meet Robin and see his work: