As Different As Chalk And Cheese

                                               'Verbascum' Watercolour on Leonardo paper
                                                                    35cm x 25cm

Its been a week of contrasts this week. I have gradually been easing myself back into flower painting, hence the two previous posts (and a promised Agapanthus yet to come). I am still trying out the Leonardo paper and trying to keep everything as loose as possible so attempted to paint a lovely dusky yellow Verbascum that I came across in my gardening magazine. Its not a plant that likes heavy clay soil, so I have never produced anything to photograph myself, so have to rely on photos I come across which I can use as inspiration, and to check the actual shape of the plant. I do try to make my version of the flowers as different from the photo as possible and put as much of my interpretation in as I feel appropriate. Not sure it is by any means one of my best, but its worth a mount and maybe a place in the browser at the next exhibition.

This week was also the return of the formal programme at our Art group, and the opening subject was 'Summer Holiday'. Due to a situation beyond my control, I have not been away this year, except for a long weekend, when it poured with rain all the time, so I looked for something that reminds me of the holidays I have taken, often on the blowy East coast of this country.

I came across a photo of a beach scene with a row of empty deckchairs among other things and thought the shape of a deckchair had quite a lot of appeal. From a painting point of view, the finished work is nothing special, but my method of producing the picture might interest some of you.

I had no desire to draw each individual chair, I'm hopeless at things like this! So I spent ages drawing one chair as accurately as possible on an old piece of watercolour paper, making the drawing the size I wanted the chairs to be in the finished painting. Using a craft knife, I carefully cut around the drawing to produce a stencil of the chair. I did this before setting out as it did take me a while.

I started the painting by painting in the sky, sea and sand fairly loosely, just to give a bit of recession to the painting, and let it dry thoroughly.
I then carefully painted the struts of the deckchair stencil with a fairly copious amount of a warm sepia and yellow ochre mix, ( making sure the paint was applied to the side which would face down when used!) and whilst it was still wet, turned it over and printed it onto the background. Being careful to make sure each chair was reasonably dry each time, I repeated the process three more times across the page.
When they were all dry, I pencilled in the striped canvases and painted them, before touching up the wooden struts with darker paint, and some pen marks. I added a bit of splatter for the sand, some guessed shadows and a bit of white across the backs of the chairs to add form to them.

For many, it would be easier just to draw all the chairs, but I did want them all to be the same and this was  a fun way of doing that.

As a final note, I had all sorts of trouble making sure that the struts were painted going under and over the correct bits of wood, and had to alter several, which is why bits of the chairs look a bit heavy!!!

Couldn't have produced two such different paintings if I had tried. Hope you enjoy looking.