This month contributing editor to Leisure Painter, Jane Stroud, has selected a painting by David Briggs which required a lot of imagination from the artist.

Self-taught artist, David Briggs, started to take his work seriously when he took early retirement ten years ago. Since then, he has gained membership of both the Guild of Railway Artists and the Guild of Motoring Artists. “I am enthusiastic about all things transport-related,” he says. Occasionally, however, he is asked to paint other things – as was the case with this painting. He explains: “Someone saw one of my transport paintings and contacted me to ask if I would do a painting for her. A few weeks previously she’d discovered a small sepia photograph of her mother as a young woman and she wondered whether I could turn it into a painting. She sent me a scan of the photograph, which showed her mother pictured close to the northern shores of Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland. Her mother was born in 1910 and died over 30 years ago. After some thought, I sketched the photograph onto a stretched canvas. I paint solely in acrylic and usually work on 30x20in. canvas boards, but the proportions weren’t right for this one, hence the stretched canvas I had sitting around was put to good use.

“My only clue to colours was that her hair was brown and so was the fur coat! I could see by the bare trees that it was winter and, as I always put great emphasis on strong directional light in my artwork to give a sense of depth, I decided a low winter sun would allow me to use shadows to create the desired effect. I included the dog to add interest to the scene. At first glance I thought it would be difficult to make an interesting painting out of the old photograph, but once I started, it surprised me how much there was to work on – from the textures of the bare trees and rough hedgerows, to the crumbling stone wall and rough pasture set against the sharp lines of the cottage. Sixty hours later, this is the result.”

Click here to see more of David's work in the gallery.

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Someone's Mum a Long Time Ago, acrylic, (61x51cm) by David Briggs