Punchbowl Lane, Dorking by Sam Hall

Super painting Sam, very realistic, I thought it was a photograph at first glance (no offense intended). Must take great skill and patience to achieve the detail.

This is photo realism at its best. Will have to look for your personal website.

Very impressive Sam

I can only wonder how long it would have taken you to accomplish a work like this.... I saw, in one of the art magazines,probably The Artist, a number of paintings incorporating watercolour and fine acrylic, in which a dip pen was used. I've no sense of time at all, but suspect if was a good five years ago - this reminds me of the technique, but also has an extra opacity and thus a greater sense of fidelity to colour. It shows I think that there are very many more than a few ways of painting landscapes - they don't have to be loose in order to look free, fresh, and natural. You don't have to abjure "fiddling", or fear finishing a work as you wish it to be - I don't even think this is really photo-realism, because the painting isn't hard, harsh, done to death like an overcooked turkey, as so many avowedly photo-realistic paintings are. It's much more tightly controlled than the work many of us tend nowadays to produce, but that's what gives it its distinctiveness and, so far as I'm concerned, appeal. Incisive work, and I like it!

Thanks everybody! This painting took me 16 days (five to six hours a day) to complete. It is the very fine detail (I'm a Virgo so I tend to paint in every leaf, every blade of grass and often rive myself nuts in the process!) that takes so long, of course, but I get exactly the result I set out to achieve that way. That is to say extreme realism - rather than slavish photo-realism - that is distinctive, colourful and with a 'happy' feeling about it -- and very clearly a painting rather than a photograph. I've never understood the purpose of merely copying a photograph, no matter how skilful the process may be. You might as well just blow up the photograph! Anyway, many thanks for your comments.