Sometimes you have to go back

Or revisiting images past.

Many artists revisit ideas and themes over their lifetime. Some ideas open themselves up to constant reinvention and some just grip you in a way that you just keep looping back to them

Sometimes age and experience make you a better artist and more able to do an idea justice. Below is the first version of an image and above is the latest version. The image was inspired by a briefly glimpsed view of a mound just inside some woodlands on the side of the M3 heading towards London. The brief glimpse gave me an idea of a giant asleep in the woods. I wanted it to be a black and white, textural image, inspired by classic book illustration. The first attempt lacked sonething. The variance in the trees worked OK but the mound looked wrong and it felt unfinished.

The second version, with its lighting effects and more obvious mound worked better but it's still not quite there.

I don't know if there'll be a third version or if the second version will be worked into further.

It's worth remembering that even bad drawings can contain good ideas.