29 May 2014 Now this us more like it. It's based on a photo that…
Bridge Near Oswaldkirk
Oil pastels are just too much fun. Every other painting at the moment is in oil pastel and it’s an oil pastel day today. I thought I’d be ambitious today and paint a scene that a friend photographed and put on Facebook (credit to Cathy). The bridge was the star of the photo, with lots of individual bricks showing and lots of weird colours showing up in the bricks.
I started with a pencil drawing today. The perspective was just too important for me to go freehand. I picked a vanishing point that the bottom wall on the right of the tunnel was pointing to and made sure that all the bricks on the inside of the tunnel converged to the same point. I’m looking at the painting now and wondering how Cathy managed to take a photo that showed the inside walls on both the left and the right. The painting would have made more sense if I hadn’t shown the inside of the left wall.
I coloured the shapes in from top to bottom. Everything went amazingly well until I got to the walls inside the tunnel. At this point, I coloured in some shadows on the right before starting on anything else. This was a mistake – I should have just coloured in the whole wall without shadows but with some bright colour on the right where the sun was shining.
The greenage behind the bridge may be a bit too green. I should have dulled the colours by mixing in some reds. The trees in the far distance look good though, with yellow highlights in the left and some branches scraped out.
Somewhere around this point, my iPad announced that it’s battery was getting low, so I took it indoors to charge and drew the rest from memory, nipping back indoors every now and then to check the source photo. The spur and the cartoony looking tree on the left look good but I don’t like the spur on the right. For the people, I’d pencilled in some shapes, which I had a go at filling in, but I’m starting to think that I’d be better off putting Frank Clarke style “carrot people” in my oil pastel paintings. I’ve not yet mastered the art of drawing fiddly shapes with oil pastels.
Finally I did a lot of fiddling with the inside of the tunnel on the right but never managed to replicate the shadow and light in the source photo.
I’m left with a mixed photo. The front of the bridge is brilliant but the rest of the painting is disappointing. It’s definitely my worst oil pastel painting since I switched to the 12*9 inch pad. It just about makes it to the sale window though.
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