This is a new painting of the hills near Bath.

The thing about Bath is that it is surrounded by hills, so nothing necessarily extraordinary there. What I particularly liked about this view was the colours of the early evening in winter. The leafless trees have a rather ghostly, ethereal shape, which made it an interesting scene to paint.

The picture above is in oils. Before I began it, I tried a sketch in oil pastels:-

The sketch concentrates on the broad shapes of colour, and light and shade, and was quite successful I felt. I don’t always make a sketch before beginning a painting, but I do find it helpful sometimes. In this case it encouraged me to paint the scene.