Author page on Huffington Post

These are the articles I published when I was writing for Huffington Post.

Roanna Carleton-Taylor | HuffPost (huffingtonpost.co.uk)



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BODIUM CASTLE

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  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...
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Canal Gardens

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  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 ...
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The Devil's Bridge

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  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...
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