Christ’s College, Cambridge

I’ve still not given up hope of being invited into Sky Landscape Artist Of The Year as a wildcard, so with that competition likely to be focused on drawing buildings (I’ve applied to be on a program based in Westerham where the house where Winston Churchill used to live seems like the most obvious subject matter) I thought I’d paint a building.

I’m back to my old hunting ground of Christ’s College, Cambridge But  this time I’m drawing one of the more attractive parts of the college rather than the ugliest.

I wanted to do a painting using just three colours, just to see how these could liven up what’s quite a monotone frontage apart from the main gate itself.  The three colours are  Prussian blue, Indian yellow and quinacridone magenta, so it’s in my favourite key of of triadic left.  It’s probably sounding like I can throw away all the other 13 colours in my palette but they will make a comeback at some point.  This triad was chosen because I wanted the most shiny of my two yellows (Indian) because of all the gold on the main date decorations and the cooler red (quinacridone magenta) because I wanted some purple in the sky.  And in my experimenters earlier this year, I found that Prussian blue makes a better threesome with these two than French ultramarine does.

Anyway, I took my time with this one, putting down a half decent drawing in rollerball and letting each coat of paint dry before starting on the next.  The drawing was generally good but is let down by   what’s just inside the door, where the lines along the floor and top and bottom of the notice boards aren’t pointing at the correct vanishing point.  The other negative is the people on the page net.  They definitely needed to be added – the painting looked empty without them.  But they’re not really right. Maybe the painting would benefit from a little cropping.

On the other hand, look at the positives.  The colours along the front wall, pavement and road have so much variety, energy and in them.  For the wall, I mixed up a neutral colour that was in the right ball park, painted a bit with that and then kept painting more bits but adding a bit of extra yellow, blue or red to the mix.  For the road and pavement, I painted them in. Extralegal colour first with not as much colour gradation, then charged in some extra colour in places.  If I do make it to Sky LAOTY as a wildcard then I need to remember to not try to mix up the colours I see in front of me but to mix them up like this.  Do something like this and I’ll be in with a shout of being the winning wildcard.  There’s no imposter syndrome left inside me.

Viewed from a distance without my glasses on, this looks amazing.  This one went up for sale and was sold to a graduate of this fine educational institution.