Good morning to you all and what a thoroughly wet and damp one it is. However the forecasters say that in the next hour or two it will start to clear away a little, so Liz and myself will have lunch at home before walking, so rather than taking a picnic out with us, it will have been eaten before setting off out.

When walking in the rain as well as obviously dressing appropriately, I am always very much aware of the intensity of colours. The rain seems to wash everything, so everything then sparkles and the colours glow brilliantly. This works when it is in dull light; but if sunshine appears after a shower, then you are in for a treat. So get out have a walk and enjoy the autumnal slash of colour ,as I will be shortly.

Now the other day I passed quite a landmark in my painting. You will all be aware of pictures of trees which appear regularly on this blog; well they are all apart of a rather large project which I have been involved in over the last two or three years. This is looking in depth at the symbiotic relationship which trees have with their surroundings. Quite a mouth full. It means simply, how trees react with everything surrounding them. The above pen and ink piece is of a near to collapse barn, just to the north of Send in Surrey; it demonstrates aptly how a once grand barn is slowly removed from the landscape and nature regains control and the upper hand. But the significance of the image is that it is number five hundred in the project. Like I said it is a large project. The whole work is stored in archival quality bound volumes and available to be viewed with no sales expectation.

Liz says that this project keeps me quiet, she wants me to continue with the project and aim for a thousand images.

Talking about walking in the rain, don't forget your camera. Keep it dry and with you because amazing images are possible under these awful conditions. Just remember that the colours are sometimes recorded better under these dull or dark days by slightly under exposing your snaps; just about a third to half a stop, not to much.

It seems to be brightening up, so of we go now fro a walk.

Duncan