L Staircase, Christ’s College

As you step into the staircase, you’ll see there’s a step down.  This isn’t the original design but a consequence of the street level in this part of Cambridge being raised a foot at some point in the past.  Anyway, after stepping downwards, you ascend a spiral staircase.  One floor up you find room L1 with views over First Court and St Andrew’s Street and a bathroom that all three of us on the staircase shared.  Up one more floor and there’s room L2, again with views over First Court and the outside world and there was (at least in my day) some cooking equipment if we wanted to use it.  And then up a few more steps was L3.  L3 is the room at the top of the College’s main gate.  It has a bay window with a view over First Court.  There’s a separate bedroom and a sort of pantry/storage room.  With so many people living outside the college, L3 became a hangout room for all my friends that year.  I remember times when I’d come back from a lecture with a load of mathies to hang around in my room for a couple of hours between lectures.  Halfway through those two hours, more people would finish lectures and come and join us.  Then I’d go off to my second lecture, leaving all the non-mathies behind.  After my lecture, back to the room and the people I’d left there would be gone and more would be there in their place.  Crazy, fantastic times.

Whenever there was a royal birthday, one of the college porters would let me know and ask that I just pull my door to that night without applying the extra lock from the inside.  As sunrise, the porter on duty would let his way into my room, climb a ladder through a trapdoor in the ceiling of the pantry to the roof of the tower and put up a flag.  I was never disturbed, being in the separate bedroom.  Anyway, the positive side of this was that I had access to the roof with amazing views through the battlements of the college and the street outside.  On one occasion I built a snowman up there.

Anyway, enough of the history, on to the painting.  The main colours today were Mayan blue, raw sienna, transparent yellow, viridian, quinacridone magenta and hematite violet genuine, with some opaque colours making guest appearances later.  I consider this painting to be in the key of green cool.

I started with a pencil drawing, spattering on some masking fluid and highlighting some whites to reserve, notably in the L and list of names on the wall just inside the staircase.  The inside of the staircase and the Darwin plaque on the wall were finished first.  There’s not much explanation needed for these; where I had the mist gun was with the walls and paving slabs.  First I put on some a shadows and dark areas on the walls using a neutral mix of primaries.  I started with quite a colourful initial wash.  Then for the slabs I just used the violet and the viridian but for the walls I used the magenta, viridian, blue and transparent yellow (not the raw sienna at this stage).  The painting looked really bright and garish at this stage but this was all part of the plan.

The next step was to apply a raw sienna glaze all over the walls to try to get them to a sensible colour while not losing the impressionistic undertones from the first wash.  In adding this glaze, I painted one brick at a time, leaving gaps between them to distinguish them from each other.  I added salt and water spatters when I was done.  Things weren’t quite right yet and I didn’t like how the colours of the walls on the left and right of the painting we’re too similar.  So I added another glaze over the left of the painting made from raw sienna and a little bit of the magenta.  Again, I did this one brick at a time and added salt and water spatters.  This looked so good that I repeated it on the right of the painting.

And then it was all about applying the finishing touches.  I tried to distinguish individuals bricks and slabs by applying bit of blue and violet in places and dabbing in the odd boundary with a neutral mix.  I rubbed off all the masking fluid spatters, then spattered on some cadmium yellow, cadmium red and (in a change to normal) cobalt blue.  Then I added some white highlights and tinkered in a few places and I was done.

And that’s it.  Some of the perspective lines aren’t quite right and I might have overdone the spattering.  But there’s a lot to like about this one.  The blue and violet are amazing granulators and make for some interesting looking shadows.  I like the orangey colour in the bricks (although, in retrospect, I might have been better off with a warm red than with the magenta) and their impressionistic undertones and worn looking appearance.  There’s history there.  This one’s up for sale.