In October 2020, I was contacted by a lovely lady called Deborah who wanted a special anniversary gift for a her husband. She liked my style of landscape painting but wanted something that would bring back happy memories and be a unique gift for him. We discussed various options for subject matter, size and budget and she sent me some photographs. I was delighted that one of them was this fantastic view of the coast in Crete where they had had a very happy holiday in 2018. I felt it would really work well as a silk painting and Deborah commissioned me to paint this as a unique silk gift for him. Painting this brought back happy memories of a holiday I had in Crete with my family in 2016 so it was an absolute joy to paint.
If you would like a special silk gift for a man in your life, please take a look at my available original paintings.
My paintings are mainly painted on pure Chinese habotai 8 silk with specialist silk paints. I start each work with a drawing on paper and then trace the image onto a piece of white silk stretched onto a wooden frame. On this painting I have painted the silk with a special medium to stop the paint from running before hand painting on the colour using watercolour brushes. You can see some videos of me in action here.
The finished painting is removed from the wooden frame, ironed to fix the colour in the fabric and stretched onto acid-free mountboard ready for framing.