39 High Street, Newington

I bumped into the local vicar yesterday. He conformed that I’m invited to have a stand selling paintings at a Newington garden party at Newington Church on Saturday 24 August, 2-4pm. So I’d better keep painting. I’m continuing with a theme, painting Newington in posterised style watercolour. I have seven different colour schemes that I use for these paintings, nine if you count the traffic light and climate change schemes which each combine together three different schemes.

Today it’s the turn of the red colour scheme, the least successful and least favourite of all those schemes. But I’m a completist and if I’m to put together a collection like this, I have to do a painting with each and every colour scheme. Which I guess means that I’ll end up with nine paintings, including the traffic light and climate change schemes. The red scheme has a first layer of rise dore, a second of Winsor red and a third of French ultramarine.

The sky was added at the very end, wet into wet. I put on some water, then dripped in French ultramarine everywhere, rose dore in a few places and Winsor red only out on the left where the sky looks reddest and just left it to do its thing. The sky is the best bit of this one. French ultramarine and rose dore are capable of producing great skies. Looking at the collection so far, it’s looking like a genius move to combine wet into wet skies, shabby foliage and posterised buildings.

Overall, though, this one feels slightly worse than the other three. It’s this red colour scheme. Winsor red is great in the amber scheme, laid over transparent yellow, but laid over rose dore in the red scheme it’s a bit too saturated for my liking. Still, we all have different tastes. This one went up for sale at the garden party but didn’t sell, so is now in the shop window.