A portrait of my friends Andrew and Hugue who run an amazing holiday let at Casale Monticchio in Umbria. I was thinking about figurative British painting in the sixties and seventies, and had got them to pose in the style of the American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman) from 1968 by David Hockney.

Even though I was more interested in Hockneys Paper Pools paintings/prints which were made in much later in August and October 1978 of pressed and painted paper pulp. I was trying to work out the water ripple paint thing. I was also trying to decide if I could get a handle on Leonard Rosoman although in the end his work seemed to much of its time and ended up reminding me too much of David McKee and Mr Benn. I was also thinking Malcolm Morley and his photo realist style paintings. But in the end as my daughter put it, it end up being, “very you daddy, no one else really does it like that.” Which I suppose is a very good thing.

I am always trying to get some half tone dots into my paintings, so I used a little photo screen print kit to fill in the details of Andrew and Hugues portraits. There is a lot of confusion on the web about exposing the photo emulsion but I had a UV lamp and used an acetate from an inkjet printer held down with a sheet of glass onto the screen. I then exposed the screen for only two minutes (if that) at a distance of about 30 cm and it washed out clean, and printed pretty sharp as well. I think I will experiment a bit more when I get a chance, to come up with the perfect timings.

I had to roll it all up and cut the stretchers down so that it would fit in a big art tube, so I could put it in with our luggage on the plane. But I stretched it all back out, when I got there, and I thought it looked OK.

Anyway Andrew and Huge seemed to like it, I’m not sure what Maude the dog makes of it though.