‘At the moment I am working on a large commission for the Royal Engineers, a piece that will eventually hang in their officers mess after a brief period in the company museum. It’s a great honour to have been selected for this prestigious painting that will show the Engineers remarkable work during the Peninsular War, where they built a series of earth work fortresses that completely ‘stumped’ the French invasion of Portugal and were known as the Lines of Torres Vedras…the title of this work.

The task to represent the royal Engineers achievements in an oil painting is a little tricky for me as my usual approach of an all guns blazing image would certainly not be appropriate here, but after a series of small sketches and some considerable research I submitted this pencil rough and was delighted to have it approved and accepted by those in charge.

Having then scaled the drawing up to the five and a half by three and a half foot canvas and altered a couple of sections I was not satisfied with I began the lengthy painting process, finishing a little area first to give me the, hopefully, right feel and then blocking out larger areas. It is most important for me to get the uniform details correct and convincing firstly before I proceed to the landscape as I will be able to show ‘the experts’ as soon as possible so that these points can be doubled checked to insure all is historically correct….it’s never a case of just getting on with the painting when dealing with military subjects….new information is continually being discovered and I must be prepared to accommodate any changes that may arise.’