GLASGOW and Greenock artists have scooped top awards.

Painter Alasdair Wallace has won the Walter Scott Award and the House for an Art Lover Award at the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour 135th Annual Exhibition which has just opened at the RSA building in Edinburgh.

He graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1991, exhibits widely and has won many awards including the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour £3000 Alexander Graham Munro Travel Award in 1997.

Talking about his award-winning painting Ease My Worried Mind, the Glasgow-based artist said: "It started off as an obliteration of an ink drawing on a piece of stretched paper.

"The landscape emerged from an unsatisfactory attempt to paint from memory a print of some trees which I once saw on TV in the set of a soap opera.

"Working from memory and imagination is important to my way of working. The title of the work can be found amongst the text along with other words but hopefully it's more than just a word puzzle.

"As always, I aim for the image to be ambiguous but engaging."

Meanwhile, Greenock-based artist Calum MacGillivray has won the £3000 Alexander Graham Munro Travel Award for the best painting submitted by an artist under the age of 30, for his painting Drift.

He said: "The painting is originally based on stories and fables I invented as a child. I spent time recalling strange characters and creatures I had dreamed up on forest walks.

"I am continually inspired by the natural world's ability to intrigue and mystify and hope to capture that sense of fascination. I hope to use the award to fund a trip to the Czech Republic to research the country's fairy tales."

And the City of Glasgow College presented artist Janet Melrose with their purchase prize, buying her painting The Wood for the new City of Glasgow College art collection.

The exhibition, which is open until December 12, features more than 300 works by leading and emerging artists from across Scotland and includes works by new graduates from the 2015 degree shows and invited artists Stuart MacKenzie RSA and Peter Randall-Page.