The last stages always take more time for me than the early stage with their rush of inspiration. The other tricky thing has been the time it has taken for my hand eye coordination to click in so that I could depict fine lines and details in a graphic linear style, not my usual way of painting where random textures and washes of tone and colour are strong elements of the composition.Having been quite hesitant i slowly became more meditative as concentrating on drawing fine line work had a calming effect.

i felt that the right hand side of the image looked too fiddley and slightly disconnected from the white table shape. And shapes in the lower section seemed a bit floaty and needed more weight and anchoring into the composition.

I carried the musical notes across the composition and across the table surface, removed a shape on the right opening up the space so that small white Ladybird beetle tracks joined to the other pictorial elements without cluttering the space.

The duration of the annual holiday at Fairhaven on the Surfcoast in Victoria, Australia is a time of relaxation, celebration and summer activities whether in-door catchup of movies and books or outdoor sport or gardening pursuits  but in the background is the threat of bushfire. Rather than depict ominous signs in the landscape I depicted a Ladybird beetle in the right hand section of the composition and small flames appearing beneath a tent on the far right-hand side.

Below is a slide show of the painting’s progress.

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