Work on The Bath Art Prize has begun...

The Bath Prize is a relatively recent Art Competition in which anybody can enter so long as you produce a piece of art that features the location (in the city of Bath) allocated to you. The location is different for everybody so the final exhibition of selected works is guaranteed to be varied. It's a great idea and Bath is such a lovely place that I can't possibly resist, all that Georgian architecture, how could anybody?

Below are my first stages for my entry. I was given George Street which is not the most picturesque of Bath streets but certainly offers many challenges. I opted to show both ends of the street in one image because I like to make things difficult for myself. As you can see in the thumbnail and final pencil work I've employed a convex lens effect to bend the straight road and buildings round to achieve this. The magpie is a device to lead the eye along the street and up to the sky hopefully give a sense of depth. I like to think the bird is the same animal just seen at different stages in flight swooping through George St and then shooting towards the sky.

The final painting is going to be huge so I'm going to have to put a lot of hours into this one.