There’s some wonderful moorland in the Peak District. One of my favourite local walks is up on Stanage Edge. Gritstone and heather with a skyline that seems to stretch on forever. This time of year, before the heather blooms, makes for an interesting landscape with some fabulous colours. The deep russets and purple of the shrubs contrasted with the sienna and yellows of the grasses. And as the weather improves we get those days with intense cerulean skies and bright, bright light.
Endless Skies
Here’s a day just like that. This day and photograph inspired some experimentation. I often like to play around with different versions of the same scene, in part preparation for larger paintings and sometimes just for the process. After working through some ideas on composition and colour in my sketch 
book, I firstly tried a small watercolour and pastel sketch. I wanted to try out some colours on a larger scale and also see how they worked together on the paper. These are current favourite combination, Perylene Maroon and Indigo.
Mixed Media Experiments.
From this I developed another two versions, one a small acrylic and oil on canvas the other mixed media on paper. The latter was great fun as I used tissue paper on watercolour paper first then primed it before painting to create a lot of texture. So which one is your favourite?
