I've entitled this painting 'The Bohemians' and this is the second painting in a triptych series. I wanted to work in a series of 3 to push my ideas forward. Sometimes working on a single painting means that I don't really spend that much time thinking about a narrative - I'm just interested in depicting a single moment and then I move on to the next. The actual image is based on both found images and life. For the background - streetscapes, cars and so forth, I found in a large hippie book I have, but the actual figures (except the 3 central figures) are polaroids taken of people I know. Part of the fun of re-editing found images is imprinting my own ideas onto them. An example would be clothing, colour - an example would be the sign that the guy is holding - I put that in there in part because I didn't wont to do the background (I'm quite lazy sometimes) and also because it's an in joke between my friends and I. I like to add personal stuff into what I'm doing. Another breakthrough came with the background and shadows. I think the reason I had concentrated solely on the figures before and not much else, was my hesitation in drawing interior and exterior spaces. I think it stemmed from art classes I had when I was secondary school - where you have go outside and draw what you see, which I found quite boring. Also I think I lacked the basic drawing a straight line skill. But I've put all that behind me - If I'm hesitant in doing something now - I just go for it as what is the worst that could happen? This is my worst but I rather like it.