Belgian Canal

 

BELGIAN CANAL

POSTED BYAUTHORPOSTED INUNCATEGORIZEDEDITBELGIAN CANAL

This was one of those paintings that took forever and I kept hoping that it would eventually fall into place. But sadly it didn’t and I don’t think it works well. The perspective is very off. Looking back at it with a more practised eye I think it is the wall on the left that throws the painting. It is at the wrong angle.

The water looks far too active for a canal too. I should have gone with still clear water and used the opportunity to put some rocks and plants in under the surface.

I liked the stone work and some of the brick work and the plants on the left. But the trees are very ‘lollipoppy’ and there’s a lot of detail missing here that would have made it better.

This was an ambitious project for a novice as architecture is a lot less forgiving than nature. But I learned a few things from it and might paint it again in the future.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

BODIUM CASTLE

Image
  It’s always been a bit of an issue for me that the things I want to paint are generally quite architectural but an architectural subject shows up my weaknesses as an artist far more than a nature based landscape painting. So I was trepaditious to take on a castle. However, the soft lines of a castle, the curves and the rounded edges are a little more forgiving than the edges of a more modern building. The shape also gave me the opportunity to play with the light and shadows which are less harsh than on a building with sharper corners. I liked the stone work on the castle though in retrospect I should have done more to delineate the individual stones. That next level of detail would have added something to the painting. The reflections are quite basic compared to later works but they give a bit of an impression of movement on the water. It’s always tricky painting still water so the reflections are my own addition to the painting. However there’s no real logic behind them so I’m n...
Read more

Canal Gardens

Image
  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 ...
Read more

The Devil's Bridge

Image
  This was the painting that started to give me confidence as an artist. Mainly because I’d attempted it before and royally screwed it up. When I went back to it with more experience I did a much better job. It was a hard photo to paint as the image swims or sinks on the execution of the reflection and that was not an easy reflection to paint in. There was also a lot of detail obscured by foliage so I had to use my imagination to work out what shape the bridge actually was. It didn’t help that the photo was very dark and it was hard to tell what was bridge and what was tree. The reflections of the trees work very well. It isn’t an exact mirror image and that makes it look more realistic. The reflections in the water are greener and shinier. It makes the water look like water rather than a few upside down trees. The back of the water however is a bit more problematic as it shows more movement than it should. There’s nothing in the picture to indicate that the water isn’t still...
Read more