Orchard Lea, Hartlip

Someone in the village asked me if I'd be interested in painting her house.  I gave her my standard answer, which is that I don't do commissions but that I may well sneak round at some point, take some photos of her house and paint it.  And that if I do, she has first refusal on it and no obligation to buy.  Just like an have mo obligation to paint it.  Deals where both sides have obligations will always end up with one party feeling that they've got the bum end of the deal and I prefer to just sell paintings, leaving both parties happy,

Anyway, I did take some photos of her house the other day and decided it was worth painting.  It's on a junction, which has worked out well for me in the past, giving me the opportunity to cast cool shadows on the road.  I messed up with my drawing, though, and put everything too low on the paper, losing a lot of road and gaining sky.  This meant I needed to do something exciting with the sky, so I thought I'd have a go at a sunset (with the sun behind the viewer and to his right).  With this in mind, I chose quinacridone magenta and Indian yellow as two of my primaries.  For the blue, I chose Prussian blue ahead of French ultramarine for its cool temperature, which I could still use in shadows on what was left of the road.  So that's a triadic left colour key.

I started with loads of masking: the roofline, the window frames, the fence, the signposts and my initials.  Plus a little bit of spattering.  Then I painted in the sky.  It was good at first, but when I tried to add in neutral-coloured clouds, they didn't really work, so I did some tinkering.  At the end of all the tinkering, I ended up with a darker valued sky than I originally intended.  And my planned yellow band in the sky was more of a dulled down orange - more about that later.

Then I painted in the house and the foliage.  With the foliage, I was careful to make it darkest just behind the picket fence.  I ended up with quite a boring shaped hedge going from left to right in a horizontal line as a result of being a bit too vigorous with the sky colours.  So I added a bit more background foliage using cadmium yellow (for its opacity) with Prussian blue.  It was looking a bit too dark and, well, opaque, so I dabbed it a bit with a kitchen towel and it looked better.  Finally O threw some salt on the foliage as the painting at this time was just lacking in interest.

And then something weird happened.  This painting was intended to be set on a warm summer evening, but everything started feeling colder.  The dark, nighttime-looking sky, the warm colours in the windows, the cool reds and cool blues all over the house.  And most of all, the way the salt in the foliage stared forming icy looking patterns.

So I painted the road, pavement and drive in snowy colours.  I put snow on roofs, chimneys and a few other places with titanium white, almost straight from the tube.  Two or three coats were needed to make it really white.  In places in the foliage lane on the roof, I dragged a loaded brush sideways along the paper, using the texture of the paper to give the impression of little bits of snow everywhere.  And. Then I spattered on loads of titanium white at the end.

It's ended up as quite a decent snow painting, especially as it wasn’t planned to be a snow painting (so I couldn't do things like reserving whites).  There are some good complementary colour contrasts there too, and green at the bottom but especially between the blue/purple roof and the orange in the sky.

And it sold quickly to the lady who lives there.  She says the snow gives it a very rustic feel.