Between the Projects and the Rock Island Line

Normally, when I do architectural pieces I work from photographs, typically ones I or Vincent have taken. This is a preliminary sketch for a painting I'm planning which is based on another photographer's work. 

One of my favourite Flickr discoveries has been the prolific and wonderful Curtis Locke whose photostream Find A City To Live In is a daily must-see. He takes pictures of the built environment with an eye for the overlooked and neglected which is truly remarkable and he was kind enough to give me permission to make a painting from one of his photos.

This building is a central detail from that photo which I have been drawing to familiarise myself with it before I begin work on the canvas. I don't actually know what its function is, and I don't want to. The interesting thing about it for me is the enigmatic nature of this and the other structures in the shot, half-glimpsed among the weeds and chain link fences.

Go check out Curtis's photos while I go and do some work.

Samphire Tower - WIP

I've had a hankering to draw this for ages but I only got round to starting the other day. The tower is a real structure on the south coast of England at Samphire Hoe. It's the creation of artist Jony Easterby whose work often combines architectural structures with sound installations. I saw an image of it a couple of years ago and was immediately grabbed by it.

Home

I cut this little printing block the other day. It reminds me of house quilt blocks which I used to love making and also of how much I'd like to start quilting again, if I can ever get my studio sufficiently organised to have the space for cutting and designing big pieces.

The snippet of text on this card is from a slightly mysterious old letter which I acquired as part of a job lot of vintage ephemera. It is from George Dyson to Miss Rosamund May and seems to be a discussion about booking church arrangements, although from its tone I don't think it's for a wedding. I love old correspondence and papers, there is something oddly touching about connecting fleetingly with the thoughts and concerns of people long gone, the outcome of whose stories we never get to hear.

Happy New Year and WIP

A very happy new year to all my friends in blogland! Hope everyone has a prosperous - in all senses of the word - 2009.

I haven't been posting much art recently and that's because I've been in a bit of a slump, which is usually brought on by too many ideas oddly enough. Sometimes I get so many creative 'must do' notions running round in my head that I get paralysed with indecision over where to start and what to do first, so I end up doing nothing at all. It is starting to pass now (I hope!) and I just began a new drawing yesterday as you can see.

Well you know how fascinated I am by architecture and I've been wanting to draw this house for a while. It's called Troldhaugen and was the residence of the composer Edvard Grieg in Bergen in Norway. I was thinking I might do some notecards with this line drawing on maybe, actually I rather like the graphic quality of it so I'm undecided as yet about whether to add paint or more ink. Hmmmm.

Riga

More architecture today. I was watching a programme on tv a while back which was about Hansa cities and the wonderful building styles they generated and became fascinated with how they look.

The Hanseatic League was formed in the middle ages as a mercantile association based initially along the Salt Route and it grew to encompass most of Northern Europe, and I'd never heard of it before. Once again I am reminded of the huge chasms in my knowledge of things which are practically on my doorstep! If you'd like to know more about the Hansa, there's a good overview here.

White City

I'm still obsessed by architecture and planning more paintings, in truth far more than I can ever do. This is a little piece I did the other day with watercolours and watercolour pencils, in my Etsy shop at the moment.

South of the Border, Down Penwortham Way

I've always had a fascination with architecture and landscape and buildings made from mud are right up there amongst my favourite things. This little art card of an adobe house is a study I did whilst thinking about a much larger piece and speculating on how much more interesting our vernacular architecture could be if we hadn't given in to the twin gods of planning and executive homes.

Personally I'd love to live in an organic, hand-built house which owed nothing to the kind of fake modernist-retro 'new builds' which I see everywhere now, but would I get planning permission for a wattle and daub, straw bale house - even assuming I could afford to buy the land to build it on? I think not. Perhaps I should move to Mexico.

Oh, and it used to be all fields round here, y'know...

North Star and Hababa Sunset

I love my watercolours. There's such a wonderful depth of colour combined with lightness of application about them. I love the way they move around the paper when I'm working wet-in-wet and the suprising effects that sometimes produces.

The first of these pieces, North Star also uses acrylics which I've laid on in glazes of transparent colour. My friend Amy describes it as a kind of interior landscape and I couldn't have put it better myself. The other piece, Hababa Sunset was inspired by various photos of the beautiful medieval city of Hababa in Yemen.

You can see both of them currently in my Etsy store - just click on the title of this post to go there.

Townhouses - Finished

So here we are, watercolours are still one of my favourite media and I decided to use some pastel colours for this. It ended up reminding me a little of the houses in Lavenham which are a bit wonky and ice-cream coloured.

For sale here

Walk in the Park - Finished!

So here is the drawing painted with watercolours. I like to redo the inked lines too after I've added colour, just for emphasis.