Hascombe is a pretty village south of Guildford in Surrey. It has a church, pond and pub which makes it a great venue for plein air artists. This was the last outing of the year for Surrey Hills Plein Air group and numbers were hit by Christmas duties but it was still a very enjoyable meet.

I decided to set up out of the wind and use watercolours. There was a handy bench and I spread out my equipment and faced in to the sun with this delightful view.

The two hours passed quickly and whilst it was chilly I was not cold and was the last one painting. We met up in the pub and discussed the morning and arty things over a shandy, very enjoyable. I took the painting home and finished off the details and added some deeper values. You get a different perspective when painting plein air and the difference is shown here when compared to the photo above.

I enjoyed the subject and was interested to see what I could produce from the photo in the studio. What would change? I liked the photos composition, with the pond being a large part of the picture and the details in the middle distance. I also wanted to try different colours and widen the view to include the distant tree line.

Looking at the picture now it’s a little lack luster and the water is too grey and intrusive. I think the middle distance works but the whole picture is too busy. So I decided to try an oil painting, removing most of the pond and concentrating on the middle distance.

This has quite different feel about it. I’m not happy with the sky and water colours but I will keep looking at it for a while and make some further changes when it’s dried. Something you can do in oils but not so easily in watercolours.