"Full Flight"

8 x 8"

Oil on canvas

Here's another little cycling painting I finished today. It's based on one of the HTC Columbia riders, Tony Martin, flying downhill during a stage from the 2009 Tour de France. This year Tony won the opening stage of the Tour de France.

As with my other cycling paintings, this one ended up being loose and painterly. It just seems that this particular subject has that effect on me and I feel compelled to paint it like this. A lot of the colour mixing was done on the canvas, dragging one pigment through another, and I tended to daub the paint on - no thinners or mediums used this time. Despite the looseness, I find that painting like this does still need plenty of thought and judgement. There's not really any randomness to it, apart from the occasional 'happy accident' that you hear artists talk about.

I expect it'll take a week or more before this one's dry and safe to ship. In the meantime if you are interested in buying just let me know.