Early Twentieth Century Hartlip

Time to work on building up a reserve of paintings ready to display at the Rose & Crown when others are sold. For today’s subject I picked out a scene on a postcard of The Street early in the twentieth century. A scene that looks like a longer shot of one I’ve painted before. Posterised paintings using the tundra colours work well for historical photos, so I thought I’d head down that route. It’s also one giant cheat code, which helps alleviate the pressure that I’m feeling under to churn out some decent local painting. I used a grid to get my pencil drawing down. After that I put down the usual three layers of tundra pink, tundra blue and tundra violet. There were some fiddly bits in all three layers, so each layer was preceded by the reserving of some ares with masking fluid. I think the third layer went down before the masking fluid was dry, so I had to spend a while cleaning it out if my brushes, a sure sign that I’m not on perfect form right now.

After the third layer, I stepped back to study the painting. It was feeling a bit colourless, so I introduced a little bit of watery tundra green and tundra orange in a few places, most notably on the road. And after removing the masking fluid, I thought that would be me done but it wasn’t. The white sky holes in the tree were a bit too white, so I put some watery blues and pinks into them. And the line separating the top and middle rows of panes in the second downstairs window from the left was all wrong, sloping upwards rather than downwards, so I tried to correct that. And I put on more violet to harden the right edge of Thatch Cottage. And that really was me done.

This one’s far from perfect, and that’s a pretty damning verdict for a posterised painting with the tundra colours. This really should be looking brilliant. The error in that window still bugs me and I don’t like the way the violet has gone brown in places – a little browning is OK but this feels like too much. I’m putting this one up for sale for now and doing it to my previously empty Rose & Crown waiting list but if I can string together a few decent landscapes, this one might be quietly moved to the reject pile.