P3 - Exercise Preparatory sketches

Line and colour studies, subject matter St Thomas of Becket church in Capel . Church I pass on occasion when driving between Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells when I want to avoid the A21., had not  realised that the Church is no longer in use which made it an ideal spot to stop and complete my exercise.



A line studies

Colour study

Painting produced based on these studies

P3 - Exercise Painting on the spot

Back to the local woods to paint the trees in situ, focusing on two large trees on in the foreground and one in the middle-ground. The leaves shroud the ground so I now aware of any change in lighting. More aware of the texture of the trees than I was when working from a photograph.  Even though I can see the detail in the middle ground clearly (not the case when working from my photograph) I opted to simplify it (not detailing every tree I can see concentrating on the two trees and the sense of distance between them.

P3 - Exercise Painting from a photograph

Here I am painting from a photo which I felt comfortable with,  I have tried to keep the painting loose, like  most of my watercolours, and as such I think it makes it harder for the viewer to distinguish between a painting that has been done for life and one that has been developed from a photograph... no reason why the same artistic licence cannot be applied in both approaches.

The composition is more in keeping with the photograph than the colours, placing the tree just of centre with the middle ground running at a slight diagonal again avoiding the centre of the paper. The colours are slightly more washed out than the photograph could argue that this is a quality of watercolours (but i won't need to strengthen the watercolour mixture.

The light source is coming from behind the tree, which in terms of tone means I could have gone darker with the tree and foreground shadow.  That said I got to a point having added another wash of red and ultramarine blue to the shadows where I felt the picture was complete... all areas consistently painted..satisfied with the definition in the tree and middle-ground.

P3 - Exercise Exploring greens outside

Having looked at works on line by Lucy Willis and Paul Riley one thing that struck me was the freshness of the colours, i.e., the colour mixtures don't look laboured if that makes sense. Also surprised by the contrasting styles of Paul Riley's work (marine vs. still life paintings), personally I like areas of detail in in the still life painting, these areas are either subtle linear marks that help define the subject or more detailed marks limited to help emphasis the area of focus.

In my painting I have tried to be mindful of this freshness trying to avoid reworking areas even if I am not entirely happy with the colour. I didn't put an initial wash across the paper but placed in fragmented areas of washes that that I added to, to define details and tonal contrast in some areas of foliage.

Three further studies focusing on greens. In all these paintings I am adding touch of quinacridone gold to some of the green mixtures, helping to the greens to look like they haven't just come directly from a single tube.  

P3 - Exercise Mixing greens 4

Focus of this exercise was the  mixing of greens taking bottles as are subject matter. Here we are allowed to build up the picture using different colours  mixture rather than using multiple washes of the same mixture to create tonal contrast within the painting.

Pleased with the result, an improvement on the previous exercise... perhaps the bottles could have been drawn with better precision but certainly feel that I am looking at green glass.