Starting with a 12x16in. Loxley Artists’ canvas board, I drew the subject using a fine black waterproof drawing pen. 

I then applied a wash of acrylic colour over the surface. Cadmium red and yellow ochre acrylics were diluted and washed over the surface to create an abstract background. I prefer using these brighter colours as some of this will shine through when applying oil pastel.

I usually work from top to bottom when painting to avoid resting my hands on any finished part of the painting so, after the surface was thoroughly dry, I began work on the sky by dragging a short piece of unwrapped white pastel over the surface to create an underpainting. Over this, I applied royal blue, apart from where the clouds would be, then gently rubbed the two colours together to achieve the correct shade of blue. 

I added light grey for the cloud shadows and pure white for the sunlit cloud edges. I left the highlights unrubbed, using the canvas texture to denote the cloud edges.

The next stage was to paint the background. A strip of painter’s masking tape was applied at the foot of the hills to make a crisp horizontal line. The colour, mummy was applied on the sunlit side of the distant slopes. Violet grey was added to all the areas in shadow then the sunlit sides were filled in with strokes of yellow ochre, luminous yellow and moss green.

A firm cup chisel Colour Shaper was used to blend the colours.

For the nearer hills I used stronger colours. The edge of the left-hand slope was painted with Payne’s grey and burnt umber. Yellow ochre and yellow deep were added and again blended with the Colour Shaper.

The foothills were painted with lemon yellow over which olive green was applied. The strokes were blended out to remove any hard edges.

Finally, trees were added along the lower levels using burnt umber. A little Payne’s grey was applied to the base of the trees then the colours were worked outwards using a small Colour Shaper to achieve the tree forms.

A scalpel was used to scratch out trunk shapes into the trees.

Finally, working down to the masking tape using mummy, I included a stone wall in the distance. 

After the tape was removed, I applied lemon yellow and olive green at the foot of the wall for the sunlit distant fields.

Although oil pastels never fully dry, after leaving the painting for a few days, it’s possible to apply more marks to denote the tree branches against the skyline. Finer marks were needed here so I used oil pastels that had been left in the freezer overnight. In the freezer they become harder and are easier to use. They quickly warm up, so an ice pack to lay them on is useful.

The first branches were added using light grey, followed by cold grey – then Payne’s grey for the darker limbs.

For the final stages, olive green was added to the lower part of the field with just a touch of lemon yellow.

For a dark shadow coming from the left I added strokes of sap green. The grass behind the standing trees was treated in a similar fashion.

The pathway was painted with reddish brown grey and edging added with burnt umber.

The puddles were mostly cold grey with a hint of yellow ochre.

Finally, I added the sheep. These were just blobs of white over which I added a shadow of light grey. Sap green shadows anchored them to the ground.