Scottish Croft

Bailetonach, Eilean Shona

New Painting

Just finished this painting using watercolour, oil pastel and acrylic ink.

It’s inspired by a croft that I used to lease on a Scottish island in the Inner Hebrides.

I’ve attempted to paint this croft several times but didn’t feel that I captured the place in a way that felt right with me. It is a croft in which I have spent significant amounts of time and hence there are many emotions and memories attached to it. It is a remote place, on a small island with no roads or shops. The only access is by boat.

The croft sits on a hill surrounded by purple heather with trees dotted around. The steep ground in front of the croft has grasses and wildflowers, until the ferns take over in the summer.

Picture of the croft taken from the bay leading to the beach area.

The wildlife author, Mike Tomkies, spent a year living in this croft in 1980, where he wrote the book ‘Between Earth and Paradise’.

This picture was taken from the hill behind the croft looking out to the mainland across the South channel.

It gives some idea of how remote and incredible this landscape is.

The West coast of Scotland is stunning - it’s an idyllic place for a landscape painter to visit with incredible lochs, rivers, mountains, islands, beaches, and plenty of remote places to explore.

This is a watercolour sketch that I did whilst sitting in my open canoe in the South channel of the island. The sea was calm and the light was stunning so I made a quick note of some of the colours and shapes that absorbed me.

Preparing the painting for printing

In order to prepare the painting of the croft to be available as a print I’ll now go through several steps to check the quality:

• I’ll take a high resolution photograph of the painting - I will be outlining this process in detail in a future post

• I’ll transfer the image to my computer

• I’ll then use Adobe Photoshop to create a file that I can send to the printers - checking the resolution is what they require, adding a border, checking the colour space is correct and saving as a TIFF file - I’ll be going through this process in a future post

• I’ll then do a test run on the print - sending it to print and then checking the result in detail. I do this with all of the images I intend to sell as a print in order to check the quality

• Providing everything is in order I will then add it to the print shop and make this available for sale

All being well this print should be available with 5 days of posting this!

You can check out the prints I already have available here

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You can check out the prints I already have available here 〰️

Here’s some images from the island, Eilean Shona: