The photo shows the front garden and one of our fields beyond at sunrise this frosty morning in North Devon.

You can see some of our ponies in the field and on the horizon is the highest peak in Southern England, Yes Tor in Dartmoor. It may not be a huge feature in this view but the camera makes it look smaller than with the naked eye. There’s a much bigger view of Yes Tor and surrounding peaks from our top fields, where it’s pretty spectacular, especially when snow covered.

I feel a painting coming on…

In fact I’ve painted this view a number of times, as you might expect. It’s not, by any means, a particularly outstanding view, but it is my view from my bedroom window upstairs here on our farm in North Devon. It can become outstanding when the lighting is extreme, or extraordinary, as with this photo I took this morning.

The thing now is to ‘convert’ it into a satisfying oil painting. It will be a small, sketch of a painting, designed to capture the light and colours that inspired me when I looked out of the window at 8 am this morning GMT. (I mention GMT because when the rest of the country is on GMT over the winter months, I — as an individual — stay on BST — British Summer Time).

So the intended painting is going to be ‘Impressionist’ in nature (a much misused term these days) which focuses on light and colour rather than detail. A lot of the information about the light and colour I observed this morning is stored in my head, as the camera cannot capture it. Anyway, enough talk, the studio heater is on, everything is prepped, let’s go!