Fully titled Hesitation Like a Surface of the Water, this textured, wet-into-wet looking piece is remarkably evocative and demonstrates some real skill. The base colours of turquoise, orange, lilac and pink appear to have been floated in as washes while the distant landscape, clouds and reflections look like they’ve been done with a dry brush while the washes are still wet. This is a prime example of replicating the unique look and feel of real media in Painter. The small, lonely figure at the centre of the composition has been created with just one or two brushstrokes, yet their stance and by extension their feelings and personality have been captured. Sometimes less is more when it comes to representing subjects! On a side note, one of my favourite movies is the anime film Spirited Away, which contains an award-winning sequence depicting a train travelling across a flooded evening landscape. Ray’s image evokes this scene, one of the greatest ever in animated cinema.

In a future issue of the magazine we’ll be doing a feature on rescuing paintings - reworking ones that didn’t go as planned, fixing problems and building on good parts. Jeff Johnson will be doing the feature, and we’re inviting you to send in pieces that need some TLC for him to work his magic on. So if you’ve got an image that’s gone wrong, or you’re stuck, or you want to improve your piece and give it a professional finish, send it in!

Please send your paintings to me - you’ll find my email address at the front of the magazine - with the subject line ‘Fix my painting’. The deadline for sending them is Thursday 30 October 2008. Only one painting per person please! Due to demand, we can’t guarantee that your piece will get fixed in the magazine, but we hope to fit in as many as possible.

We’ve had a couple of people mention that they’re missing the disc that accompanies issue 22 of Painter. We need to figure out if there has been a batch of them sent out from the printers like this, or if they’ve gone missing randomly on the news stands.

If your copy of issue 22 was missing its disc, please send me an email (or private message on the forum) telling me which store you bought it from and where (store, town, country, or if you’re a subscriber or bought it from the Imagine eShop instead) and let me know if it looks like the disc has been removed or just wasn’t there in the first place - you can tell by looking for the glue we use to stick the discs onto the back page with. A scan or photo would be handy too.

Remember, you can download all of the disc files from the Painter website, so if this has happened to your copy, you won’t miss out on any tutorial files.

Ugly fairies are so much more fun than the pretty ones. Maggie’s Bug Collector is no exception. The googly eyes behind goggles and the buck teeth are the first thing you notice, along with the elf ears and the fascinated, geeky expression, and these create a bizarrely cute, appealing character. What I like most about this piece though is the texturing - the patterned, silky and shiny golden scarf, woolly sweater and velvety jester’s cap are all wonderfully warm and tactile - a really good example of how to paint different kinds of cloth and play up their textural contrasts while sticking to a very restricted colour harmony. The buttons and bells are nice touches along with the rough stitching on the cap. And take a close look at the background - the shadowy twigs are fantastic and the butterfly in the centre of the composition is not quite managing to camouflage itself against the woody background. It’s an image that really bears a lot of second looks - there’s a lot more to it than initially meets the eye…  

The evolution of Jason’s style over the last few months has to be seen to be believed. This detailed, textural piece is a prime example of what constant practise can do! The features of Jason’s subject are much more realistic than in previous works and there are some well-observed touches such as the ruddy colour around the nose and the subtle treatment of the dark, windblown hair. I particularly like the colour harmony of this piece; the contrast between duck egg blue and peachy brown shades is wonderfully complementary and works well with the somewhat battered antique effect that Jason has applied, calling to mind World War II pilots or 1950s adventurers. The textural contrast between the leather and sheepskin on the jacket is nicely painted too.

This portrait study from Cathy Barber displays a wealth of texture and detail. The hair, beard and the wrinkles on the face are all particular highlights, and the twinkle-eyed facial expression is brilliantly captured. A fantastically executed piece and one of which Cathy should be very proud!

Plenty of other images caught my eye on my trek for this week’s Picture too. Theodore Miller’s Elk Brush is another highly textural piece in smooth, clear autumn colours. Gramarye by Maggie Barra is an intriguing fantasy image, as is Ray Kamizoe’s bright, anime-influenced Fairy. Miriam Montagni’s Fantasia piece boasts some incredibly detailed, stylised background patterns which are just delightful, while Cuyler Smith’s Creative Thought is an interesting blue-toned little piece that displays some real skill with light and shadow. And I also got a chuckle out of Frederick Taylor’s The Future comic strip.