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!