Stockbury Church

Time for a new experience.  To get some practice in (just in case I make it on to Landscape Artist Of The Year as a wildcard) I thought I’d better have a go at painting on location rather than starting from a photo reference.  And at working against the clock.  This local church seemed like a good place to start.

The colours today1 were quinacridone magenta, French ultramarine and transparent yellow (nothing else), so it’s in the key of purple cool.  The motivation behind this was that I wanted to include some greenery.  Transparent yellow makes for good greens and the best triads with transparent yellow also include French ultramarine.  Quinacridone magenta gets the nod over rose dore as I needed a bit of red to mute those greens and with rose dore being made of two pigments, it has more chance of turning everything to mud.

The colours are great in this one.  I especially like the background trees, where I used a stick I found on the floor to scrape out those tree shapes.  I get the feeling this is the first green I’ve used for a long time (skin tones excepted).  The shadows on the church worked well, actually making the day look sunnier.  The texture on the tower was also good.   This was done using a Terry Harrison foliage brush and, without it, that tower was looking like a single Lego brick.  The perspective wasn’t great in a couple of places but that’s why I need to keep practicing.

The whole thing took two hours, so I’d have no problem on LAOTY.  In fact I’d probably have time to run off two paintings in four hours.

So, good day at the office.  This one was sold two years later to someone wanting a painting of this church to give as a gift to a couple who had married in this church and moved to France.  The proceeds were all handed over to Stockbury church.