Beggs – Exercise: Montsalvat Autumn

Montsalvat in Autumn – an evocative fusion of colour, age, rustic charm and general all-around artiness. My instruction was not to attempt anything grand, but rather look for a small slice of life.

With the buildings and trees I suppose the most obvious part of the painting, it was getting the angle of the path right that for some reason proved difficult. The painting became more real when I put in the bits of other trees that went out of the frame. This is a lesson in itself. Real life rarely resolves itself into neat centred objects.

Painted en plein air, I had to first deal with the sun appearing on my still-white canvas, and then chase down the moving shadows fixing them partly from first strokes and filling in with memory.