The finished painting!

I read somewhere that you have six seconds to catch a reader’s eye before they move on, so I thought I would put the picture first and talk about it afterwards

Once again the photograph has leeched out some of the colour. The painting itself is brighter and fresher than the jpeg, but for the moment is the best I can do

Quite a time consuming painting to do, but rewarding watching the finished view come towards you.

The palette was much as I foretold in one of my previous posts:

Phthalo Blue/ Cobalt Blue mix for the sky and water, with extra phthalo blue on the water

Raw Sienna/Naples Yellow as a base coat for all the buildings etc

Sap Green/raw sienna mix for trees

Transparent Brown/Ultramarine Violet for all shadows

Burnt Sienna for brickwork

Cadmium Red

I did use a little Permanent Rose as a glaze over the brickwork to give it a little zing. The burnt sienna first coat has to be rock hard for this. The result should look as though the sun is catching the building

For the white reflections from the boats, I lifted out the blue back to white paper, and then touched in some White Gouache or body paint, whichever you call it. Still watercolour but opaque

Fun to do, but nice to finish. This painting will go towards my exhibition at the Guildford Institute in May, which seems a long way off but really isn’t as I have much to do. I still need a snow scene for the exhibition and will be working on that next. As we so rarely have snow these days, I shall have to work from a photograph without snow, and put snow in. This is quite a test for the imagination, but it will be interesting to talk about, perhaps in the next post.

The web site has been busy over the last three months, which is nice. The only problem is I am selling paintings which were going in to the exhibition. Can only sell a painting once though, so best get working.