"The Yellow Jersey"

6 x 8"

Oil on board

(sold)

Besides painting, I like to spend some of my time on two wheels, something I've been doing regularly for about five years, and even more since joining my local cycling club in Stirling. There's nothing better sometimes than a long road ride in good weather with good company (although the weather in Scotland is usually not as reliable as the company!).

I've always wanted to try my hand at painting some cycling scenes, and finally got round to finishing my first attempt. The sport of road cycling has so much colour and energy to it that I knew I wanted to try and capture as much of that as possible. My approach was to try and keep it fast and loose and to not get caught up in fussing with any details. I wanted to capture a sense of movement and energy in the painting as the rider in yellow powers his way up a hill somewhere. It's quite an impressionist style I think, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

A quick word of thanks to my friend and fellow cyclist Owen Philipson, who has let me use some of his cycling photographs as reference material for this and future paintings. If you are at all interested in cycling (particularly cycling with a Scottish perspective) then you should pop on over to his blog, The Drum Up.