Thought you might like to see a painting I finished before Christmas. Last year, Helen Betley swam the length of Windermere… butterfly! Her husband asked if I could paint a painting of the swim. I don’t generally do landscape paintings, (as actual paintings, rather than digital drawings) but I do do a lot of figure drawings, and gold leaf, so I suggested this combination as a bold composition, rather than a straight painting of someone swimming. All the leaf is gold, the different colours are different alloys of gold, and it’s all applied piece by piece, with a paintbrush as it’s too delicate to pick up. The rest is pencil and a watercolour wash, and the little folly is really there on the shore of Windermere, but I added the inscription in my drawing, as a detail to commemorate the swim.
All the photographs are of the same painting – the gold leaf changes so much with different light you may think there is more than one version.










This is fabulous! You are incredibly talented! Another fine painting!
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Thank you MerChele!
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This is a beautiful painting Nancy, and I love how the water colour and mood changes with the angle of the light, just like it does on a lake, and the swimmer is such and accurate likeness!
Thank you so much – you are incredibly talented.
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Thank you Helen, very happy to hear that. It was a fun one to do 🙂 x
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