Barnacle geese, stage 1 - This will be an acrylic painting of part of a flock of barnacle geese coming in to land in a field on the Inner Hebridean island of Islay. On a tinted background I have started to rough in a few bird shapes and have indicated where certain horizontal elements of the background will be positioned. I always draw directly with the paint - it is so much quicker and freer and it allows one to rapidly block in areas of tone. It is also easier to wipe off than it is to rub out pencil lines.

Finished painting - It just remained to paint the bird and its reflection to a finished state. There were a few minor alterations to be made to the shapes of the bird and reflection, otherwise it was a reasonably straightforward exercise to paint over the underpainting with more-or-less the same colours and with a bit more attention paid to plumage and structural accuracy.

Detail of foreground.

Stage 4: Having painted all of the water and sand to a finished state it still did not look entirely convincing - it was hard to 'read' the transparency of the water, particularly in the foreground. I noticed in some photographs I had taken that there were scattered fragments of dark seaweed, mostly in the water between the ridges of sand, so perhaps it was these that gave the idea of transparency in the water. I painted some in and suddenly the effect I had been searching for was achieved. I also added some worm casts.

Stage 3; I have now worked down the painting, almost to the bottom, finishing the water and cloud reflections and the sand ripples.