Line Drawing

Spinnaker Tower painting drawing stage

/ davidrpharmer / Leave a comment

This is the drawing so far and even this took some working out. There was an awful lot of masking out to do. The tower itself has had to be protected as the night sky will be darker than the colour chosen for the tower itself.

Likewise the gables on the rooves over the shops on the right hand side have had to be protected. I don’t usually like a lot of sharp edges in a painting, preferring to let colours blend, but in this case it has been unavoidable. Plastic or metal edges really have to be shrp otherwise just look wrong imho.

I am apprehensive about starting the painting on this one, especially the sky. If that doesn’t work, and I have to start again, then I will have wasted a lot of time. Let’s not go there. I have retrieved worse situations

Painting in someone else’s style

/ davidrpharmer / 5 Comments
An example of someone else’s work

This isn’t something that I usually try. The example above is one of many hundreds of images by celebrated watercolour artist Judi Whitton. She starts with a line drawing in ink, and then uses watercolour. It would never have occured to me to imitate this style, had I not read her article in one of the recent painting magazines in which she outlined her method. It seemed like an invitation

The point that she was illustrating was what to leave out, as much as what to put in. In other words ” less is more”

That would be a useful lesson for me, as I never know when to stop, which is a common fault, so it might be worth me trying this exercise to see what I can learn. More importantly what will I remember for the future

Likewise, and this is something I have always tried to do, is the power of suggestion, rather than painting in every detail. If that comes out of this exercise, even better

For now I have done a line drawing from one of my old photographs of Venice. Quite a lot of her work is architectural, and she has written a book about Venice. In case anyone finds architectural work daunting, her method can be used on a variety of subjects. Probably best to look at her website.

My scene from Venice

I have used an old photograph from one of my visits, which looks like a corner of the Doge’s palace, and have drastically reduced the detail

I will see what I can do with this