Hampshire

This painting was commissioned during my tour of Wiltshire but ended up straying into a few couple of villages in Hampshire.

It's not very often that I get chance to paint a thatched cottage scene as they make for an ideal subject matter and 9 times out of 10, owners of thatched cottages will have already had the house portrait done.

The first stage was the drawing, followed by a wash of Cerulean Blue and Ultramarine for the sky. The cloud highlights were picked out with tissue paper and then the shadows added last with a mix of Payne's Gray and Ultramarine. I layed down a wash of Sap Green and Yellow Ochre for the grass and worked on the background using the same mixture but adding some Cadmium Yellow here and there. The darker areas of foliage were achieved with the addition of Payne's Grey and Ultramarine again. The next stage was to work on the house itself with the thatch first followed by the brickwork and the detail around the windows - picking out individual bricks where required. Finally the finishing touches were added and the foreground foliage completed.

The quintessential English cottage scene!

Haresfield

This was painted from a photograph taken back in July 2011 in Haresfield during my promotional tour of Gloucestershire. Painting a scene from the height of summer in the middle of winter always seems a little strange as I look out of my studio window, freezing, and see the wind and rain sweeping across the Yorkshire moors. It makes me crave the warmer weather again.

It was a fairly awkward house to photograph from the front with neighbouring properties obscuring most views. This was the best view to work from which captured the main features of the house. There was a question as to whether it would be better to paint a view of the rear of the house but the front view the best.

Started with the drawing stage, highlighting a few individual bricks and remembering to change the window in the bottom right to match the others. Painting the sky, road and foliage initially with a light yellow ochre wash as the background to the walls and gradually working up the different layers to bring out the details.





'We are thrilled with it, and are sure it will give us a great deal of pleasure for many years to come.'
Suzanne

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