My preferred method of working (painting) is outside in front of the subject (usually landscape) in one or often two goes. I find it hard to recall or imagine the specifics of nature and want to see it in front of me in order to work.
The tones and colours especially are always changing and the light moves around and comes and goes so that I feel the need to work quite quickly – but not so quickly that detail and the particular are lost. Not everything can be recorded so it becomes a process of choosing, suggesting and trying.
Viewpoint and composition are important because of interest created by perspective, scale, gaps, mass and recessional space. So a lot of this time is spent beforehand walking about and looking to see what might become a possible painting.
Each painting or drawing is a sort of little experiment to try and capture a fleeting moment, something I have seen and felt, to try and make it fixed, so that I can see it again, can always see it.
And the ways of doing it are always slightly evolving so that it feels slightly different each time, even if the subject remains the same.
One can be familiar with a place or a subject over many years but then a new view or situation presents itself afresh, that had not been seen before, and it seems worth trying again.