Stevenson Building, Christ’s College, Cambridge

The main colours today were cerulean blue, viridian, raw sienna and rose dore, so this is in the key of green warm.  Raw sienna and rose dore were deliberately chosen in an attempt to get the building colour right.  There’s also some French ultramarine in the sky and greenery and some dabs of Winsor red and Indian yellow at the bottom.

I start with a pencil drawing and then masking out the outlines and any white I wanted to reserve in the windows.  The drawing was a bad start – I’ve had to give the painting a serious rotation to get the verticals straight.

Next was the sky.  This started as cerulean at the bottom and ultramarine at the top and I dropped in some of the viridian and the rose dore.  I see the sky as the first movement in a symphony and I need to establish some ideas to be explored in later movements.

Then it was onto the buildings.  Most of the main colours are cerulean, rose dore and raw sienna, although there’s also some viridian in the roofs and in the decor at the top of the end staircase.  I got some decent variegation going while I was doing this.  But then there are the shadows and the dark bits.  Most of these are made from viridian and rose dore but all of the shadows suffer from poor control of values.  The big shadows on the left are far too dark and the negative painting of the brick patterns above the bottom row of buildings look like I’d look if I decided to put on mascara.  Drunk and in the dark.  I tried to unite the shadows with the buildings by glazing over with a thin layer of raw sienna: it’s helped slightly I guess.

The greenery at the bottom is better but not great.  I used both blues, the greens and ten raw sienna and tried dabbing on some Winsor red and Indian yellow with one of my Frank Clarke foliage brushes in an unsuccessful attempt to get a bit of colour.

This one’s not going in the shop window.  A bad day at the office today.