By Ruth Dodd

Friends, Sarah and Paul Trezise wanted a painting depicting their “in the steps of the pilgrims” journey in France and Spain.

They walked some 1320 kilometres and travelled 600kms by train. The brief included a daily Facebook post plus a series of photos and icons.

I called upon my experience as a cartographer and used Google Earth Pro for the topographic representation and to accurately locate the towns of special interest. I tilted the imagery to obtain a 3D of the Swiss Alps, Les Pyrenées and the Massif Central to better represent the terrain. The colour of the imagery was far too dark and would not have shown off the items of interest to best effect. I chose to paint in colours that would show off the terrain and the route of the walk.

The work was painted in oil on treated board, 50 x 100 cms. I have attached an enlargement to better view the complexity of the work.

Text was created on my computer and once the position, font size and symbology was finalised, together with the size and position, the icons and text were glued onto the completed background. Paul provided the icons using Affinity Photo to convert the photos to black and white drawings. This is a very nice professional system obtainable at a reasonable price. I resized the icons to make them consistent and enhanced them with colour and added a gold frame to each. The whole was then gloss varnished.