Old Nuuk

I started by cropping down my source photo to something that I thought would make a good composition. Having the horizon one third of the way up the page meant that I could have a huge sky area where I the supergranulators could be allowed to to party.  I thought long and hard about whether to include the car.  I decided in the end to include it because the only way for me to get better at drawing cars is for me to stop leaving them out of paintings.  I made the car blue rather than the black in the source photo because I wanted a brighter colour than those in the tundra set but that would work with them.  French ultramarine was a no brainier as it was already included in the blue, pink and violet tundra colours.  For the main colour on the house I went for an understated green rather than the grey in the source photo because I wanted to make best use of the tundra colours.

So I drew on the outlines and masked out some whites then got to work.  The sky is made up of tundra blue, tundra violet and tundra pink.  The consistency of my sky washes is at just the right level to maximise granulation, so this was always going to look good.  There’s some great granulation and storminess as in there and some interesting halos around buildings and along the horizon.

Next came the buildings.  I mixed some great colours here and I like the white edges along the roof and gables.  The edges of planks on the biggest shape came out really well – I had a good steady hand today.  The perspective’s off in a few places but that just seems to be how I roll.

Then I painted in the snow.  I think I’ve been a bit heavy handed with this today, to keen to give the tundra pink, tundra violet and tundra blue plenty of exposure.  I should have left more white and applied much more watery washes.

Then I painted in the car.  This is where the French ultramarine came in (although I’ve toned it down by throwing in some tundra colours) and where I needed to use the cadmium red and cadmium yellow for the back light and number plate respectively.

Finally, I removed the masking fluid and added some very thin tundra pink in some of the white areas.  And I tinkered some more with the snow, making it look a bit dirtier than it should have done.

Overall, this one works and is going up for sale.  There’s a nice feeling of an upward thrust from the house into the sky, which gives it a bit of energy.  The slightly dodgy perspective, where the house gets wider at the top, adds to this.  Next time, though, I should make the sky a bit lighter and the snow a bit cleaner.