I took a break over Christmas to be with my family, but the snowfall made me keen to get back to work and I have spent this week out and about taking some landscape photographs which I will eventually use as backgrounds for my subjects.
I paint directly from photographs that I take, but I don't necessarily use the same background and will often cut a subject out of one background and paste it onto another if I think it works better that way.
The snow scenes will obviously work well in paintings for next year's Christmas exhibition, or may possibly turn up in future Christmas cards.
