The Ophir artist won best rural subject painted in a traditional style at the 2015 Sydney Royal Arts and Crafts Show with his painting A Long Day on Tuesday night.

Mr Lewis entered four paintings into different sections of the show this year and has been painting for almost 40 years. 

“I got this same one in 2007 and last year I got third in the bird section,” Mr Lewis said.

“I just do the best I can with everything I do, I just try and improve all the time.”

Although he often creates traditional paintings Mr Lewis described his style as more impressionism than realism.

“I do some more contemporary stuff where you exaggerate it but this (Sydney show) I always enter more with the traditional and it’s more rural people that go through it,” he said.

Depicting sheep grazing along the sides of a gravel road under a magnificent gum tree, A Long Day is one of many artworks he has created with a droving theme.

Mr Lewis said he often paints outdoors, and on this occasion set up and spent several hours drawing the scene on the side of Ophir Road for the award-winning painting.

However, the work also has a substantial amount of creative licence and had to be reworked due to the angle of the road and proportion of some of the trees.

“The scene was there and instead of just having trees on the road I put the sheep in it,” he said.

“I try and tell a story with the picture.”

tanya.marschke@fairfaxmedia.com.au