The other night I went up to Parbold Hill which gives views across the Lancashire Plain. I wanted to paint the churches on the hill in the evening light. I couldn’t find the view I was after, but I cut my losses and did a watercolour sketch looking down from the right hand side of this painting. This row of trees attracted me as I sketched and after I had completed it I walked around seeing if there were some alternative views and saw the shadows the trees were casting up the hill and the light on the top of the branches. For this painting I have isolated the trees, cutting a fair few down in the name of composition.
That evening I then went on walking and found a view of the churches I was after. Sod’s law. Anyway I took a few photos and came home. There was a time when I would have continued searching rather than getting on with some painting, but on too many occasions I have finished with nothing or started so late I didn’t have time to complete and finished up rushing it. Anyway, it was a lovely summer’s evening.
Other landscapes are on my website grahammcquadefineart.com
graham mcquade 
This is quite beautiful and easy for me to feel I’m there, in the scene, with the little grasses in the foreground. I love the way good artists use light in their work. And I’m amazed at how you’re able to work so well in so many mediums!
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Lovely. I enjoy the solidity of the trees which contrast nicely with the delicate grasses in the foreground.
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Gorgeous Graham, especially how you treated the trees on the middle line to the ones in the back – the gradual sense of detail is just perfect, as are the shadows laying across the field. Real nice work on the foreground grasses. A wonderful painting!
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Great drawing
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This is a beautiful piece of work! This is exactly how I imagine the english countryside to look….I love the perspective and the shadows. Is this watercolor or pastels, or other paint….it is just a beautiful landscape!
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Thanks Rebecca. It’s a pastel painting.
This isn’t typical England, the sun was out. But you need the rain to keep it verdant.
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I really love this piece – it’s beautiful! Did you do this with regualr soft pastels? Superb drawing – I love it!
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Thanks Jo. Its chalk pastel – mainly the soft, but I do have some conte pastel in the boxes. I don’t do the classic method of conte underpainting and then soft over the top, I just wade in, quite often scraping pastel off the stick and rubbing the fine powder into the paper to get soft gradations.I mainly use Unison pastels.
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Wow! Those trees strand there almost like they are waiting odor the artist to come along. What a beautiful capture with the long shadows and evening light stretching its last between them, Graham!
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I’m so sorry. That is supposed to say “waiting for the artist” not odor. Shame on me.
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No worries, I guessed it was a typo – there wasn’t a u in it.
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