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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Wing, nr Oakham

This was a commission picked up during my tour of Rutland and Leicestershire in September when it was unusually hot. The photograph you can see was taken from standing on top of a neighbors wall over the road, which was really the only suitable place to take it. The photo was taken on a cloudy day and I wanted to paint it as if the conditions were a bit brighter, enhancing the foliage and the brickwork. The sky was painted with a wash of Cerulean blue, introducing some yellow ochre towards the horizon with a few clouds mixing paynes gray with ultramarine and a dash of crimson.

I then worked from the distance to foreground. Sap green and crimson being predominantly used for the foliage, yellow ochre and burnt sienna for the brickwork. The darker accents were added using a mixture of paynes gray and ultramarine.

Very pleased with the finished result.

This is what my customer said:

"...Have kept forgetting to thank you very much for the house painting, safely
received on schedule and now at our local gallery for framing. It is a
lovely piece of work and will give us all a lot of pleasure..."

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www.petechapple.co.uk

Bredons Norton

This house can be found in the village of Bredons Norton, in Worcestershire. After googling this village I found the following words to describe it:

The whole area is an oasis of peace and tranquility, a secret corner of England, where time seems to stand still yet the modern world is not forgotten.

That just about sums it up I think.

The finished painting was altered slightly from the original photograph. A large barn was removed to give a far more appealing background - the benefits of artistic license in action!

Rous Lench

A house in the unusually named Rous Lench. A village in my home county of Worcestershire. The day of my visit was mixed with sunshine and showers. I caught a sunny spell when I took the photo from which I worked for this painting.

The trees in this painting is a good example of how my portrayal of foliage in general has developed. Moving away from attempting to pick out each individual leaf as you would see in a photograph and more towards giving an impression of the foliage by picking out the odd leaf shape against a graded wash of colour.

Church Farm, Kington Langley, Wiltshire

This reminds me of a late summers day in Wiltshire.


It's a wedding venue set in the countryside. Couples who choose this as their wedding venue will have the option of commissioning their own watercolour produced from photographs taken on their wedding day.

I particularly like the way the tent is highlighted by the sun from the right exaggerated by the dark background of the trees. The closing in of autumn is hinted at by the addition of yellow ochre in the tree canopy.

View from the Pond

Graham, who commissioned this painting gave me the option to choose which view of the house to paint. This made a nice change as most people specify exactly which view they want painting which doesn't leave me with much choice on how to represent the subject matter. I chose this view from the pond because even though a lot of the house itself was obscured by the trees, I thought it was more interesting to portray more of the landscape of the garden.

'I commissioned the is painting form my wife's birthday.
She is very difficult to buy for.
This turned out to be a complete success. One of the best presents she has
ever received."

Graham