Finally detailed drawings of the shire's buildings, vehicles and machinery have long been a part of Mr Tilney's repertoire and his latest iteration has been selected as a finalist, out of over two thousand, in the National Capital Art Prize.

"I never really expected to get into this at all," he said, "I've entered many smaller competitions so to be selected, I'm pretty rapt about that."

It's not the first time a Blayney Shire artists has been represented at the national art prize.

In the inaugural competition last year Newbridge artist David Lake made the finals.

His work 'Restores Dream' is a deep and narrow collage of many of his line drawings that he's completed over the years however this time, as an experiment, he's embellished the sketches with a dash of colour.

"I got some really good quality pencils and I thought I'd see what they'd look like all coloured in," he said.

As a pastel artist the change to pencils worked well and he continued on redefining his work until he was satisfied with the result.

The next process was to piece together the works into one cohesive artwork and then follow his interesting finish to his work.

"First an ink outline of the image is drawn and then the ink pens are added to create lines and shading," he said.

These are overlaid to form collages as I find this methodology helps to add dimension and distinction to the artwork."

Mr Tilney then sticks the sketches to canvas and coats it all with six coats of clear varnish.

"This allows the art work to be touched," he said. "People can then feel the texture of the work."

Without being able to allow viewers to touch and feel the artwork in the flesh, Mr Tilney is hoping that a few Blayney locals will be able to boost his votes when it comes to the People's Choice Award which last year registered over 25,000 votes.

The judges choice for first prize in the open category is $15,000 and for the people choice it's $2500.

"People can vote as many times as they like, but can only do so after a 24 hour period," he said.

"So it can depend really on how many people you know."

Mr Tilney is looking forward to seeing his work displayed with hundreds of others at the Fitters' Workshop in Kingston, Canberra from September to October.