Finally finished this one last week. It was originally a picture of Patrick McGoohan from the Prisoner TV series, it kind of went wrong as when I finished I decided he looked more like John Romeros Night of the living dead.

Rather than chucking away a perfectly good canvas I just sanded it and thought I’d just paint a quite colourful scene from a photo I’d taken in Scotland in 2004. It was meant to be a quick painting done in a weekend and on the first day I almost finished it. Then I hung it up in my study with the intention of getting round to finishing it the next weekend. Not exactly to plan, I didn’t touch it for 12 months until last week, it was a bit odd really as when I got it down to finish painting it only actually took 15 minutes to finish the sea.

There’s a bigger version in my oil painting gallery.

The latest random portrait I’ve considered finished, I’ve been painting this one for far too long and I think I’ve over painted bits of it. It was the first female portrait I’ve started and I found it much harder to paint than the male portraits I have done, not exactly sure why. Also the skin tones on this one I found really difficult and they just don’t quite work as well as some of the previous paintings I’ve done.

For the technical among you this is a 10″ * 12″ painting in oils on stretched canvas.

Had complete insomnia last night so pulled out an old canvas to paint over and mixed up some heavy oils. Painted between 2.30am and 4am in the morning from a dream about being back on Oronsay (small island just off the Isle of Skye). Paintind on oil board 30 inches by 20 inches in thick oils.

Also completely off topic why is it that car manufacturers quote bootspace in litres ? Do you know anyone who has ever filled up the boot of their car with fluids ?