Hmmmmm, I wonder who that could've been?

Perspective eh? Well, as it has way too many letters in it for a Sunday anyway, who cares? I think it's fantastic and can only envy your skills-it's fantastic.

nail,
never mind, thats the differance between a technical drawing and a piece of art, wasnt that the sort of things consevatives have always said about fine art - where would Picasso , Gaugan, even Leonardo have been if they listened to the petty minded nitpicking:lol:

Sean
ive a degree in drawing and painting and it looks mighty fine to me

+1

It's a PAINTING!

If it looks right, it is right.


(Anyways, no actual harm in someone pointing out 'errors' or inconsistencies - it shows they're taking an interest.)

Old-Nail,
since the building which _you_ are creating is both rustic and French, I'd reckon that if any of its surfaces or lines were anywhere near straight, parallel to or remotely close to being at right angles to one another, you might be in danger of losing your magic touch...

ken.

( Btw, is it there any chance that one of the computer whizz kids on here could put together a 'time lapse' sequence of the stages through which the painting is passing? )

I actually think the criticism is fair, the drawing is inaccurate, but as I said these things evolve, until the point where I'm happy with it - then it stops.

As in life I don't adhere to straight lines, nor obey rules, and I can safely say that the law of gravity is the only law I that truly respect, even then I have attempted to defy it on occasion.
As for strict accuracy, I can't imagine how childhood would have been for those unable to watch and enjoy a cartoon because they were filled with distortions of perspective, or ill drawn and proportioned human beings. Or those that must calculate the required tensile strength of Spiderman's web needed to overcome an eleven stone man swinging through the air at terminal velocity, which is of course

I did a bit more work on the picture on Sunday morning before returning to my old home town to visit my parents in the afternoon as they're both quite old, well I'm 50! So I like to go and keep my eye on them once every week or so to make sure they're ok.

I absolutely detest going back to that old town though, it always reminds me of the life that I used to live before I knew any better. I drove by an old haunt of mine and was greeted with the gap toothed grin of two likely lads, they were both leaning on the railings outside the pub, pint in hand, all stripey jumpers, tattoos and shaven heads. The black eye was optional apparently, as only one of them had one.

Anyway, back to the painting.

I've been a bit nonplussed over the last couple of days, while mulling over how exactly to better describe the difference between a painting and a more technical discipline such as illustration. The mention of inaccurate perspective earlier threw me a little, not because I didn't know about it, but because I had assumed that everyone had the capacity to understand that it wasn't that important in this case.

It was only when I began painting that the answer, the solution of how to explain it better became clear. I had started this sitting with the rear wall by adding more 'old plaster' texture, this time extending down to include the base colour for the straw that will eventually cover the floor. In doing the back wall texturing I almost completely obliterated all the stuff on top of the car that I had already painted previously, and once the wall was sufficiently textured I painted them all back in again!

I added a base tone to the floor, and as you can see because of it the oil can and milk churn are also partially lost, but that's how it goes, and that's the explanation that I was looking for. In an illustration, the illustrator needs spot on accuracy to which he adheres throughout the process, it is a rigid discipline. In painting, although an initial framework is put in to begin with, in the subsequent stages it can be pushed and pulled around, changed, painted over and repainted until the painter is happy with what he has.

When texturing the walls I tried not to lose the transparent darker areas though, which still show up as brown in these photo's. These areas will be the darkest darks on the finished canvas, and by keeping them free of solid paint the finished painting will have a greater sense of depth in the shadows.



I put in an impression of the exterior with a tree, sky, and clouds through the open window, and added some leftover red wine to the bottle on the windowsill. then, as an afterthought I put a cork in the bottle to save anyone telling me that the wine would be spoiled otherwise.
Again, that's the beauty of painting, you can do what you want, when you want, and a painting is only finished when you think it is so anything can change at any time throughout the process.



I'm having trouble getting decent images without colour distortion or reflections from the wet paint but hopefully this will show that I have begun to feel my way for the right colour to use on the car. It's a barn find, which means it will be rusty in many places and dusty in others, but my instincts still tell me to go for a blue.

That's something else that is perhaps not fully understood by non painting folk, quite often I start a painting without the slightest idea what the colours used in it will be, I then just wing it and see what happens. I prefer that approach to having a plan, as again planning is what illustrators do, and it then seems more like work than enjoyment.

Apart from a unifying glaze that will also darken the areas in deep shadow I'm happy to leave the background as is for now, so I began to add the straw, or hay or whatever it is that's found on the floor in old barns. I've got my eye on the lower right of the picture too because it looks bare, so no doubt something will be put in there soon to help close the composition off in that area and create a bit of interest.

In the next sitting I'll put a little more colour and detail into the foreground, before starting to add some more texture and colour to the car itself.

It's been said that I don't suffer fools gladly, and that's right - I don't. I'm also pretty hard on folk that don't give 100%, including, oddly enough, myself. So today I gave myself the biggest bollocking I've ever had.

I'm a dick-head, I must be because for the most part of the day I've been telling myself so " What a dick-head...what an effing pillock", about myself...over and over again.

Why? Well, because I'm impatient, rash, impulsive, short tempered, and stubborn. And that's just for starters. I'm also unable to sleep very well, and last night insomnia paid a weary visit. After several hours of huffing and puffing, or studying the ceiling while trying not to wake the Mrs, daybreak finally came past the curtains at around 5.00 am.

I got up and had a look on' tinternet for a bit before deciding that I might as well do some more painting. So I put my palette out and began to add some detail to the car....BUT because I had a bee in my bonnet about the car being blue it wasn't so easy.

You see because the colours that I'd already laid in were warm tones, and Blue is a cool tone so didn't look right. Blue/Grey I could do, even cool grey which appears blue when set against the warm tones of the plastered walls that I had just declared myself 'happy' with. But no, I wanted blue, so impatient to get on - stubborn me pressed on, and rash me went with him.

As the day came proper and the light became full daylight I was horrified at how bad the thing now looked. I'd put about an hours work into detailing the car, but due to using blue on the car the background now appeared horribly dull. At this point 'impulsive me' joined in the fray, and the next thing I knew the background that I had been content to keep was gone, obliterated by frenzied brushwork.

I also lost some of the clear vibrant darks that I had tried so hard to maintain, and then I sat back, looked at the painting and said "what a pillock!" I've repeated that sentence like a mantra ever since, "What a nobhead, why didn't you leave well alone?" as I struggled to repaint the background before the Mrs got up and saw what I'd done.



I've put another background in, but it's not as good as the one that was already there because I ended up being pushed for time, yet remained too stubborn to just stop and do it another day. I've now done what I often do with all naughty paintings and turned it to face the wall for a day or so, that'll teach it, and in the meantime I'm still wide awake.

Ok, so I had the whole afternoon spare today so I was able put a little more work into the painting.

Starting out I still wasn’t happy with the texture of the walls, and as they are such a large part of this painting I needed them to be right, so I re-did the entire wall area from scratch.

I tend to paint from dark to light, and from background to foreground, so I needed the walls in before I could go any further. I had in mind that they needed to evoke the damp, musty atmosphere of an old barn, where the mouldy plaster has flaked off and cracked over the years.

As well as the texture I had to keep to the dark tones that were necessary in order to make the 'sunlight' effect of light coming through the window stand out when I add it later.

When they were done I added more detail to the window area, such as texture to the old wooden lintels, and an indication of where light has hit the various lumps and bumps. I also added a brighter green to the bottle which was caused by the daylight hitting the window rebate showing through the glass. When using colour you have to think about what happens in real life, and of the an amount of daylight hitting that bottle some would reflect back off it, and you can just see the greenish tone added to the plaster in the rebate above the window opening.



Note also the blueish light to the left of the window. That will be developed further later on but it represents that visual phenomenon that happens when you look directly at the source of light from a darkened room, the edges of the window appear slightly blurred by the strong light.

In oil painting you never paint up to the edges of something then stop, there are a couple of reasons for this. The main reason is that by doing that you end up with hard lines where one colour or tone finishes and another begins, also by doing that it's really little more than 'colouring in' a fixed drawing, which will rob any painting of it's passages of spontaneity.

Because of this, once more the brass candlestick and the top of the basket were lost when repainting the wall behind them, and once more they were restated by painting them back in. This may seem silly, but if I had tried to paint up to and around those items the effect wouldn't have been the same. Also each time new colour is added to a painting the relationships between the existing colours shift a little, so by simply adding a small amount of one colour it's possible to suddenly make everything else look wrong!

The other reason that hard edges need to be avoided is that artists have a few tricks to allow them to represent 3d images on a flat plane, quite apart from the use of perspective that is, and the appropriate use of hard and soft lines are one of the tools used to create the illusion of space.

Painters know that certain things can be made to appear to come forward, and others made to recede. Hard lines, warm or bright colours, strong contrast, and bright lights appear to come forward, while soft smudgy lines, cool or dull colours, and areas of low contrast recede. By using these hard and soft edges, bold and subdued colours, with lights and darks a reasonably true to life image can be developed.

Once the stuff on the roof was redone I moved down to the windscreen where I laid in and softened some dirt, dust, and green mould, which has the occasional streak in it where a rivulet of water has run down the screen...obviously the roof of this barn leaks.
I then added some more rust to the car doors, and little flecks of light here and there around the barn where the light is catching the tops of the strands of hay.

Again the painting is set aside to dry, while I figure out what to put in the empty foreground. I've had an idea, and I think that putting in this item along with the can of oil will give a clue as to why this car was laid up originally.

An engine?