Over the Hill and Far Away, Mark II

And a very good painting it is.

Trendous details Robert and a smashing result

Where you just a little tipsy when you did this Robert???? . It's the almost right angles of the hillside and the tree. It makes for real interest , and as usual your textural treatment of the foliage is great. Slyvia.

Sylvia is a little devil - knowing my weakness for gin and tonic.... But no, as said on Facebook, and I'm sticking rigorously to this story, I was sober enough to impress Ian Paisley ('alcohol ... the devil's buttermilk', as he once whispered in those scarcely audible tones we all recall so fondly). Insofar as there's any attempt to observe the rules of perspective in this at all, it's somewhat eccentric - and if I were doing it again, which I probably will, it will be in a different format, and the right side will be less oddly insistent, and more in keeping with an overall shape. AND lines might converge, which here they don't. There were reasons for my doing it this way - like a lot of my stuff, there's a considerable element of experiment in there - the fact is that when you go outside and look at the landscape, it just laughs the rules to scorn; and what farmers do to shape it isn't always consonant with any principles of design either. But then, as Alan Owen has reminded us, painting is largely about design - and basically, you have to impose one. So yes: I'll do it again; I don't much like the length or proportions of that path - maybe it would have worked better without a path at all: and the right hand side is, I suspect, odd without being interesting. Still: you live and learn.

I also like this for the composition and effect!

Well, I like this just as it is! The hillside has been at the gin and tonic, but the converse angle of the sky clouds to the hill creates alot of interest, and if it was me (said enviously), I wouldn't change a thing. Lovely painting, full of life.

You've managed to get great textures in the spiky grasses and the variety of colour in them is just lovely.