This month's been busy again for me, I did my first market at East Cowes which was great and thank you to all the lovely people of East Cowes and anyone else that visited. I have had my first 1-2-1 business mentoring session thanks to the Isle of Wight Creative Network and I have also completed this painting of 'Appuldurcombe House' which is one of three paintings going to be included in the Isle of Wight Artists' Calendar 2023 which will hopefully be out soon, I will keep you posted.
I have fond memories of Appuldurcombe as I grew up in Wroxall after moving there with my family from London when I was five, and often went walking in the beautiful surrounding countryside so it's been lovely to paint it and reminisce.
This painting is a lot more detailed than what I've been painting of late, I felt it needed to be. I took quite a few photographs as usual and walked around the grounds of the house trying to get a good shot that I could work from.
I wanted to feature all of the tall tree on the left and all of the house on the right, but the shot with the whole tree had the house obscured on the right by foreground trees so I have to confess that I did use a bit of artistic licence with this painting and tweaked the view slightly to combine both photos, see reference photos I used at the end.
Again the composition was at the forefront of my thoughts in planning this painting I analysed all the photographs I took to see which would work best as a painting and I liked this one because of it's circular composition, the big tall tree on the left (need to find out what this tree is, think it could be a Scots Pine or Corsican Pine!) leading down into the foreground with the dappled shadows from the spring sunshine leading round and up to the overhanging foreground tree which takes your eye around the picture with the prominent feature of the house in the middle. (See picture with white arrows.)
With watercolour you have to work from light to dark so I began with a light blue wash in the sky and then a green wash for the foreground. I then started adding the light yellowy greens to signify the new fresh leaves of the overhanging trees and bushes and began to fill in the light grey on the house. After adding the dark windows I added the darker dappled foreground green which made the lighter green stand out more and continued to paint darker areas to the other trees and bushes and added more detail to the house. I then realised I hadn't made the sky dark enough and so tentatively put another wash over doing the same with the foreground green to really make the centre stand out.
I wanted show the house in some of it's serene surroundings and the give the fresh feeling of spring, hopefully I've succeeded.
Scroll down to see progression and reference photos of this painting.
Dates for your diary...
The next 'East Cowes Indoor Market' at East Cowes Town Hall will be Saturday 9th July from 12.30pm to 4.30pm the market will have a selection of local producers, artisans and business owners and I will be selling my original artwork, prints and cards.
My Open Studios dates are Tuesday 19th July - Saturday 23rd July 2022 where I will be exhibiting my work in the back room of Godshill Methodist Church, Godshill, Isle of Wight, PO38 3HZ.
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Here are some links you may be interested in:
Previous post from last month: https://www.sharonould.com/post/last-light
If you are interested in buying this painting as a giclée print click on the link below which will take you to my Etsy shop:
If you are interested in buying this painting as an A5 greeting card click on the link below which will take you to my Etsy shop:
Thanks for reading!