I was recently contacted by a client who has been going to The Glastonbury Festival for many years. The festival is vast, however, they explained that their favourite view of the festival was at The William Green Field and felt that they would like a permanent memory of it in the form of a painting.
You can buy a limited edition print of the painting here
A brief history of The Glastonbury Festival
It all began modestly enough in 1970 on a single field on Worthy Farm. The headline act was T-Rex who replaced The Kinks. That festival all turned out OK so they did it again the next year. This time, Pink Floyd were meant to bill but pulled out. They were replaced by a smart young pretender named David Bowie. Over the next few decades it all grew and grew peaking in 1999 at 250,000 due to gate crashers jumping over the fence.
At this time, the festival was in danger of being ruined by its own popularity so a bigger and better fence needed to be erected which snakes in a great circle around the valley.
Since that time, peace has generally prevailed. A few stars on show over the years have been: The Rolling Stones, Coldplay, Radiohead, U2, Neil Young, The Foo Fighters. Not just rock greats either. Even Country stars like Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers and Johnny Cash have all played here.
Painting The William Green Field
As the festival is only on in the summer and it is not running in 2018, I could not just go down there and set to work as I normally would.
I decided to solve the problem by rooting through the many photos I have of the festival and ploughing through the internet and good old google images.
Once I had a fair library together, I worked up a drawing containing the main features of the site. Thankfully, there is a tower to the left and a vast sculpture to the right so it allowed me to frame it up rather neatly. In between it gets massively busy with people moving from stage to stage with others who sit about eating and drinking in the (hopeful) sunshine. This meant plenty of figure drawing which I enjoy greatly.
I also wanted to portray the scale of the site so I worked in the distant hills showing the famous fenced boarder on the tree line which is well over a mile away. In between, I scattered the far off circus tents and tipis you can hire for the duration of the festival.
I also had to add the ancient (since 1991) stone circle at The Sacred Space. You can just see on the back hill it to the right of the red tent in the middle.
Once the client was happy, I got to painting it all up. We were both really pleased with the result. The client also had the added bonus, because Michael Eavis is my neighbour and he was kind enough to sign it for them.
Prints and original paintings of the Glastonbury Festival for sale
Original Watercolour painting of the market at the Glastonbury festival to buy here
Limited edition print of the market of the Glastonbury Festival to buy here
Original Watercolour painting of the Tree Cafe Glastonbury Festival to buy here
Limited edition print of the Tree Cafe Glastonbury Festival to buy here
Limited edition print of The Park Stage, Glastonbury Festival to buy here
Limited edition print of The Avalon Stage, Glastonbury Festival to buy here
Limited edition print of The Cocktail Bus at the Glastonbury Festival to buy here
Limited edition print of the taps at the Glastonbury Festival to buy here