And The Birds Up On The Wires And The Telegraph Poles

Still beavering away today at building up a stockpile of local landscapes to display at the Rose & Crown and, in particular, landscapes in soft pastel that could be used as Landscape Artist Of The Year submissions. After painting a Queendown Warren scene two days ago, I was back in the village today with a view along The Street, looking towards Stonehall.

I went for warm colours again and worked from the back to the front as usual. The sky was the easiest and the most fun, dropping all sorts of warm colours into the underside of clouds. I should try some non sunset skies at some point though, see whether I can get them to work. The trees were more tricky but I think I managed to get some three dimensionality to them, with yellow lighting up their right hand sides, darker colours on the left and lots of reds, purples and blues to keep things interesting. The wall was harder. It took me a while to get to a colour that was the right mix of warmth and accuracy but I eventually got there and added some brick-like marks for texture. The grass was pretty straightforward once I’d worked out that the gras verge needed to be three dimensional and not just sprayed on the wall. The road was fun and satisfying, including lots of shadows from nonexistent, out of frame trees. The background bits on the right look fantastic: it’s unfortunate that I didn’t crop the photo on a different place and end up with Stonehall at the centre of interest. Instead the centre of interest is a little to the left, where I was careful to have some big value contrasts.

I only added the telegraph pole, the wires and the birds as an afterthought at the very end, which was odd as they were one of the attractions of this scene in the first place. I drew in the wires freehand in fast sweeps rather than using a ruler, which I think was for the best. I might have been better off using charcoal pencils, though, as the wires are slightly thicker than I’d have liked.

Overall, though, this definitely works and there’s a lot of joy that comes through in the colours. This one’s going to be named after a line from Telegraph Road by Dire Straits and is being put up for sale (price here) while patiently awaiting its turn to be displayed at the Rose & Crown.