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Mr. Armstrong puts the finishing touches to a picture of Whalley Parish Church.

A Padiham man is among local artists to show work at an exhibition of North country arts and crafts in Samlesbury Hall this month. Duncan Armstrong, aged 24, of Shakespeare Street, works mainly in pen and ink, and 40 of his works will be on show at the exhibition. He began drawing when he was five, and a teacher, noticing the detail on his painting of a railway engine, said that some day he would be a draughtsman. At 15 he got the urge to show his work, and turned to charcoal as a new medium. But he found he couldn't get the detail he wanted, so he began to work in his present medium of pen and ink.

He has developed his own technique of using an "undercoat" of watered down ink to produce a sepia effect, and his 10 x 6 works can take up to 33 hours to complete. Earlier this year, Duncan gave up his job at Mullard to work full time on his commissioned pictures, on which he spends about seven hours a day. He photographs the subject and then works from the photo, which means that he has quite an extensive collection of past and present local scenes. He is a railway enthusiast and trains form quite a large part of his work. But on every picture, whether a town or country scene, there is his "trademark" - a gas lamp. He said: "It's not always apparently there, but if you look closely you'll see it somewhere."

The Samlesbury exhibition will be Duncan's third. Together with Padiham artist, Harold Patefield, he had an exhibition at Burnley Central Library, at which he sold about 20 pictures, and he has also exhibited at the Haworth Art Gallery in Accrington. Other local artists to exhibit work at Samlesbury are Cecil Watson (coppersmith), Ronald Carter (blacksmith), Harold Patefield (oils), Rita Drew (coppersmith) and Ken Bainbridge (jewellery).