Four Colleges

I was back in the studio today but, after a long housework sesh, didn’t have much time for painting. So I thought I’d go for something in the style of Neil Whitehead, something I’ve been wanting to do since reading his book a few days ago. This is a scene in Trinity Lane, Cambridge that Cambridge University used in a LinkedIn post recently. The one point perspective, portrait format and v-shaped sky make this view ideal for a painting in this style.

Rather than drawing completely freehand with fineliners, I put down some very rough pencil shapes first as a guide. The way the buildings on the right bend towards the left was a deliberate tweak on my part. Once the pencil guide was down, I drew everything in with a fineliner, keeping the pen on the paper most of the time, which really helped me keep things loose.

And then I added the watercolour. The main colours today were French ultramarine, Winsor blue (green shade), Winsor red, raw sienna, Indian yellow and viridian. I added in a bit of potters pink in places in an attempt to get some interesting granulation going. I started with the sky, with both blues and a little of the pink, keeping colours watery, painting in vertical stripes and encouraging runs. Then I moved on to the buildings on the right and things started going wrong. I felt myself torn between replicating the colours I could see, replicating the values I could see and going for crazy colours. I tried all three at various times and ended up with too much paint on the page, making things too far and filling out the whole shape, leaving no random white areas. Finally, I added some spatters at the bottom and top of the page to vaguely suggest movement and energy. For some of the spatters, I used white gouache in an attempt to stand out against the dark building. Feeling a bit disappointed with my efforts at this point, I stopped and went for a walk.

When I got back home, I looked at the painting and saw that the big dark shape on the right was an issue. To mitigate the problem, I went over most of the lines in the painting with fineliners of various thicknesses. And that was me done.

It’s not a disaster, this one, but it’s not exactly what I was after either. The linework, the sky and the dark shadow in the road are all but I just wish the big building shape on the right was lighter valued and included some random white areas. I’m also wondering whether I was right to paint this one on hot pressed (smooth) paper. I did this to help protect the fineliners but Neil tells his readers that this paper doesn’t soak up the paint so well. Which might be why the windows on the right are the same blue as the walls even after I’d tried to make them darker. Still, I have no problems putting this one up for sale, with the price to be found here.

I’m calling this one Four Colleges because four colleges are in view. From left to right we have Caius, Kings, Clare and Trinity Hall. The first two are mainly white, the others (which are the colleges of Number One and Number Two Sons) are painted in.