Roanna Carleton Taylor

  This was an interesting piece to paint as there was no skyline. Most of my work is very traditional in the way it is presented with the sky usually the top third of the painting. It is something I am looking to move away from as it can be a bit restrictive and is also more of a photographic rather than a painting composition. This was a challenge as the hill had to appear at an angle without using a skyline as guidance. Painting the trees was actually a bit boring and looking back I think it would have been better to create the illusion of the number of trees rather than paint each one individually. Fewer trees with more detail and shadow would have worked better. The colours of the painting I lie very much, particularly the autumnal colours of the earth which was something I spent a long time on. The colours did not translate as well to the water though. The muddiness of the water is realistic but what I should have done is take more artistic license and use the colours from...

  I sold this painting just before Christmas 2021 and it was great to think of someone liking my work enough to wrap it up as a Christmas present for someone they cared about. It was a massive boost as an artist. Not the money because I hadn’t priced it high, but the fact someone would put my work on their wall and look at it for years to come. That said there are a few elements of this painting that I would do better if I was painting it again today. There’s not enough shadow and shape on the bridge and as this is a focal point of the painting there should be more detail and emphasis on it. The grass would also benefit from more detail. I’ve learned since this how to give grass more of a detailed effect by using different gradients of darker and lighter greens. Particularly in the foreground some individual blades of grass would have worked well and would have created a sense of depth in the painting with the detail fading out as the eye goes deeper into the painting. The ge...

Most people know Portmeirion as the place where the 1960s drama The Prisoner was set. It remains to this day one of my favourite programs and even while painting it I could visualise ‘Rover’ roaming round the grounds with menace. I might even put him in next time! There is a lot I was pleased with about this painting. The perspective and colour of the buildings on the top row worked very well. It is hard to paint with block colour as opposed to brick as there isn’t much detail to capture and the overall effect can end up looking a bit childlike. But the shadow and the shape gave it the dimension I was aiming for. I quite like the building in the foreground though I’m not completely sure I pulled off the perspective on this one. I think it works. I’d have liked to put some benches in the back of the building to give the illusion of more depth. The right hand side of the painting didn’t work as well as my reference photo was very obscured and I had to make some of it up. The buildings ar...

  This was a very topical piece when I painted it as the hapless Dominic Cummings had just hit the news in the middle of the Covid 19 pandemic claiming he drove to Barnard Castle to ‘test his eyesight’. The interesting thing about this piece is not so much what I put in as what I left out. I spent ages trying to decide whether to put a Specsavers sign in or not. Adding it would have elevated the piece to a work of satire but leaving it out kept it a traditional landscape. I think if I hadn’t been pleased with the castle I would have added the sign but as it turned out to be one of my earliest architectural success stories I didn’t want to cheapen it by playing for laughs. Ironically now I have a few more paintings and a bit more confidence under my belt I probably would add the sign. The castle itself worked well on this painting. I was very pleased with the structure, the shadowing and the realism. The trees and the foreground rocks turned out well too. Sky is possibly a little bl...

These are the articles I published when I was writing for Huffington Post. Roanna Carleton-Taylor | HuffPost (huffingtonpost.co.uk)

  I was brought up close to Roundhay so this is a place that means a lot to me. There are some things you paint and know they are a one off and others that you know you’ll paint again and again throughout your painting career. And Canal Gardens in Roundhay Park will be one of mine most often visited. There was a lot about this painting I liked. The building works better than I had hoped, the fountain on the water is great and after many attempts I got the brick work to be the colour I remembered from my childhood. Not necessarily the actual colour but that’s me developing as a painter and painting what I want to see rather than copying from a photograph. The flowers were great fun and again a lot of this was from other sources and imagination as my source photo was in the autumn and I wanted to paint it like I remembered on a Summer day. I was particularly pleased with the flowers on the left and the depth of the flower beds and shadowing. What didn’t work well in this painting is ...