Disney Mural

I was commissioned to paint a wee boy's bedroom - he was daft about Disney. The entire room was covered with Disney characters, the traditional ones.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and Winnie the Pooh were included too. Mickey's sparkles glowed at night.

Inaccessible Temple Landscape Painting

Inaccessible Temple, chalk pastel on board.

I love using chalk pastels, especially iridescent ones. I've used them all over this painting, but annoyingly, you can't see them in photos - I've tried with several. They added a shimmer to the water in silvers, and depth in bronzes to the rocks.

Sorry for letting you know what you can't see.

I still wonder how anyone gets to the temple - I saw no boats.

Kintra Beach, Islay Sunset Painting

Kintra Beach, Islay, oil on canvas

This painting, although quite small, took me a long time to do. It sat in an unfinished state for ages, drying, while I worked out what I was going to do with it.

After weeks, it came to me, and in a couple of minutes I completed it. The clouds had been too dark and where jumping out from the canvas - a few brushstrokes to calm them down, and it just worked, straight away.

I love it when a painting comes together like that.

Cheetah Cub I, Wildlife Painting

Cheetah Cub I, chalk pastel on board

The original painting was of a cheetah family, the mother and 3 cubs. It was OK. But as time went on, I began to hate the way I had painted the mother, and the composition stopped working for me; so I cut it up.

I now have two cheetah cub paintings that I am much happier with. This is the first.

I'll post the second one at a later date.

Sketch of Trees

I found myself with a little bit of free time, waiting for someone in the car; and what else could I do but get out my sketchbook?

I love this brush pen which allows me to play with different thicknesses of stroke as I work.

Ignored, Cat Sketch

Ignored by a Cat, pencil on paper

This cat so pointedly wanted to be ignored, or do the ignoring, but I didn't oblige. A quick sketch couldn't be resisted.

Beinn Damph, Scottish Landscape Painting

Beinn Damph, mixed media on board.

I wanted to experiment with this, and combined two of my favourite materials, gouache and chalk pastel.

Goodbye Comfort Zone, Suilven Landscape Painting

Walk into Suilven, oil on canvas

I don't like brown. I really hate it. I never wear it. It's an old school uniform thing.

But while painting, I decided to push myself out of my comfort zone. So I got the brown paint out.

• Burnt Umber
• Raw Umber
• Raw Sienna
• Burnt Sienna (I quite like that one, actually)
• Yellow Ochre (it was in my school tie, so it's still hard to stomache)

I mixed in blues and pinks while I was working, just to alleviate things and even scraped away paint with the hard end of my brush. This is what I came up with.

I'm not finding brown quite as offensive as I once did.

Wild Azaleas, Landscape Painting

Wild Azaleas, chalk pastel on board

The first signs of spring after a bitter Korean winter - pink azalea flower. No leaves, just the flowers.

Winter Korean Temple Sketch, Landscape Painting

Winter Korean Temple Sketch, chalk pastel on board

When I look at paintings I have finished, they take me back to the moment I worked on them. It could be a piece of music I was listening to at the time, the struggle I had to create what I wanted, or in this case, the experiences I had in the place I was working.

The bitter, bitter Korean winter was nearly over, and at last, I was able to sit outside to draw without freezing. I headed up into the hills not far from Busan, to the tranquil setting of one of South Korea's many, many Buddhist temples. Enjoying the peace, I settled myself down, with all my materials around me and nearly keeled over with fright when morning prayers began. Far from being calming, they were being broadcast deafeningly over a crackly tanoy, its speakers attached to trees all round me. The sound was bouncing off all the hills and echoing for miles. It was loud.

I worked through it, giving up on listening to my iPod. After 45 minutes, silence descended and I began to work. The monks left me to it, except when wordlessly plying me with coffee and, bizarrely, gobstoppers. 

I loved Korea's temples, and would visit and draw them many times over, at many different times of the year.