Dan Young, Studio

I thought the most difficult days to make a painting in my odessey would be family holidays. The christmas day and boxing day paintings were hard to fit in but eventually nephews who are under four years old do sleep so you take adavantage of the quite time and paint a sprout or one of their toy boulders. But making this saturdays painting while camping was slightly tougher. First of all you have to make sure you take everything you need and pick a limeted pallette of colours, while at the same time not knowing what you will paint. You also have to find time in your busy schedule of laying out in the sun, BBQing all your meals and using the wash up facilities on site. It's a tough life. But I was blessed when we spent the afternoon at cleawell caves in the forest of Dean which is now an iron mining museum but used to be a working Iron ore mine. The red oxide in the caves is quite spectacular in some areas and it was a piece of iron oxide that I painted that day. I also made my own oil paint out of some pigment they sell there made from the rocks from that very mine! Brilliant.