High Street, Newington, 1920s

I’m still building up this series of posterised paintings of Newington. Today I painted a scene on the A2 from the 1920s. The colour scheme is the blue scheme, so the first layer is cerulean blue, the second French ultramarine and the third quinacridone magenta. And, as usual, the sky was added at the end, wet into wet.

I always seem to do something different to normal with these paintings. Today I did two things differently. The first was that I didn’t use masking fluid. Some of my white highlights have been looking a bit ugly and hard edged, so I thought I’d have a go at being disciplined and leaving highlight areas white. I think I did OK. And the other thing I did was to wet the buildings to the far end of the street and dab at them with kitchen paper in a tempt to make them fainter. It worked a bit.

It’s not great, this one, but definitely not bad. Just like with all the others in this series, I like the mood that the colour key sets but I’m less than 100% happy with the detail: the third (and maybe the second) layer should be drawing out some detail but they keep ending up looking as loose as the first. Maybe that’s just my style. Anyway, this one has earned its place in the team and it did indeed sell at the church tea to someone who liked how the blue colour scheme suggested age.