Scarecrow festival Thornton le Dale

This week sees a scarecrow festival in our village.  They are very popular in this area, some places being very much better than others.  I suspect that those who have been doing it longer have evolved   a greater level of Worzel Gummaging than others.
I think this is the first one here, but the standard was pretty high, and certainly provided much interest for the hundreds of ice-cream licking tourists who wander the streets of the village looking for something more to look at.
I bravely took to the main street to paint it.  For such an attractive village there aren't all that many 'ready made' painting locations,  indeed even the postcards on sale in the shops only have a limited choice of views, mainly centered on the thatched cottage that I posted about recently.
The structure of the cottages was really complicated to sort out, and I abandoned my first attempt as I had strayed away from the initial sketch I did in my sketchbook, and it was already starting to get more formal that I wanted.  The careful approach is my fall back position when I am struggling with a difficulty (in this case getting the drawing right), but for my second attempt I had sorted out in my mind what went where so I made better progress.
On reflection I think I have got some way towards the simple statement in the painting of the cottages.  I think it might look better overall if I crop down the left and bottom by a few centimetres.  As it is painted on a board that I made myself at least I know that the canvas will be firmly adhered and it won't suffer unduly from the attentions of a stanley knife.

Scarecrow Festival Thornton le Dale

oils on canvas board

10x8"