So for this painting I was keen to try out my airbrush again but not sure how it would handle the black paper. The reason is that you have to thin the gouache paint down to make it more a liquid to go through the airbrush. The down side is that it makes it very wet and transparent, so it takes lots of layers to cover the black card, without making it too wet.

After I used some low tack masking tape to work out where the sky and reflection would be I started using my airbrush.

I used ultramarine blue for the top part of the sky so the silhouettes would stand out against the sunset.

Then I used a little white mixed in with Naples yellow, once about 6 layers of this had dried I added a little orange for the sunset.

Once the masking tape was removed I started painting the trees and shrubs on top of the dam wall.

Now the more difficult part is trying to paint the reflections and mirror the trees as closely as possible.

The next day I had to help set up artwork for my upcoming exhibition, Surrounded by Nature at Dogwood Crossing Miles, Queensland on the 3rd September to 27th October.

When we had just about finished placing all the artworks on the wall we noticed that things were not symmetrical I never got around to finished my last landscape. This was also a different shape to all the others. You can just see it on the floor in the right of the photo.

Guess what I was doing first thing in the morning ?

Up bright and early to finish one last painting for the exhibition, luckily I only had to paint a windmill and a few stars in the night sky.

I’m so lucky that I had all the frames made in February and only had to place the artwork in the mount and tape everything up.

I’m very happy with the results and will definitely be using my airbrush a part of future artworks.

Only three more sleep until my exhibition and one more sleep until I turn 50, so this exhibition is going to be a major milestone that I have been working towards for the past 9 months.