Painting No 9 - First Steamer of the Morning, Ullswater

Oil on hardboard, 20"x 13"

Once again I'm attempting difficult lighting conditions. Still working from photographs, this one was very misty so I had to lift the background out of the haze a little by making the colours stronger. I had to redo the foremost hill after making it too orange but I quite like the overall effect now it's finished. I'll be sticking to brighter lights for the next few. I moved the steamer near to the centre to balance with the island.

This painting, for my friend Sally, is the first of, I hope, many many more of the Lake District in North West England. I aspire to become a mountain painter. Having said that these mountains are not typical of what I hope to do due to the hazy mist.

Ullswater is thought to be the lake by which William Wordsworth saw the daffodills that inspired the poem of the same name. Here's the first verse:

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Incidently this was written in Grasmere in 1804 the year before my great grandfather Joseph Wren was born in Grasmere. It's a small world.