Peter Howson, the war artist who travelled to the Balkans to gather material for paintings depicting the human tragedy in Kosovo, said yesterday that he expected to die when a gunman held a pistol to his head.

Mr Howson was in the passenger seat of a car that had just driven through a checkpoint in an Albanian town late at night when an armed gang wearing balaclavas appeared out of the back of a van.

A dozen gunmen waving Kalashnikov rifles surrounded the car. Mr Howson wound down the window and a man pointed a gun at his head

"All I could see was this massive faceless guy who was holding the gun at my temple. For ten seconds he stood like that and I thought I was going to die," he said.

The men continued to shout at Mr Howson and his friend Iain McColl, the sculptor, who was driving, in a language they didn't understand.

"Suddenly I remembered we had identification cards," said Mr Howson. "So I reached down very slowly to take mine out of my pocket. I showed the Humanitarian Aid card to the gunman, who put down his gun and burst out laughing."

The armed gang turned out to be Albanian policemen who thought that the car belonged to the mafia. Mr Howson, 41, believes that the misunderstanding could have cost him his life.

Work in progress: Grim faces painted from memory after his recent trip to Kosovo surround the artist Peter Howson in his Glasgow studio.

The artist, whose experience as Britain's official war artist in Bosnia left him severely traumatised, travelled to Albania as part of a convoy organised by the charity Edinburgh Direct Aid. His trip was sponsored by The Times and the paintings that he is working on in his Glasgow studio appear exclusively in this newspaper.

During his first Bosnian trip in 1994 Mr Howson suffered a breakdown.

He found the sight of dead and mutilated bodies, starving children and violence so shocking that he begged to be allowed to return home without producing any work for his sponsors, the Imperial War Museum.

On his return to Scotland Mr Howson was ridiculed and denounced as a coward. White feathers were pushed under the door of his home near Glasgow. It was his former wife, Terry, who persuaded him to go back, accompanied by Mr McColl.

Yesterday, Mr Howson, who continues to be haunted by images of Bosnia, said his visit to Albania had proved both difficult and illuminating.

His convoy, carrying food, medical supplies and clothing, left Edinburgh in April. It wound its way across Europe through France, Italy and Greece before reaching the Albanian border.

"We tried to cross at a mountain border point in the middle of nowhere. We were all knackered. We hadn't slept or eaten properly since leaving Britain. We spent our nights in the lorries because we thought the supplies might be stolen if we left them," said Mr Howson.

The Albanian border guards stopped the convoy because the drivers did not have the correct paperwork. For two days Mr Howson and the drivers were trapped in a no-man's land without food or water.

"It was very tense. Some of the drivers wanted to dump the stuff and head back. There were armed guards and dogs everywhere.

"There was one madman who walked around with a huge, double-edged axe. He came up to us and said: 'Don't go to sleep at night.' One time I asked him what he did with the axe and her replied: 'It's my hobby.' I don't know who he worked for but he was very sinister."

Eventually the guards allowed the convoy to cross the border.

As they drove through Albania towards the Kosovo border, Mr Howson saw refugees who had struggled down from the mountains. "The countryside was just teeming with people. Some of them looked in a really bad way," he said.

Almost two weeks after leaving Britain the convoy reached the refugee camp outside Korche where thousands of refugees were awaiting supplies.

When he was in Albania, Mr Howson was an observer. He did not draw or take photographs. "It would have felt too embarassing. I don't work like that. I prefer to keep it in my head until I start work," he said.

Mr Howson flew home from the region a few weeks ago.

The work he has produced after his visit depicts distraught refugees and grim-faced policemen. He draws in colour and features strong faces close up.

In his Glasgow studio Mr Howson is working on pictures of characters he met, including the axeman and the border guards.