(Part 1: Painting-in-Progress: The Old Croft House)
So having pondered my old croft house for a bit (aka procrastinated), I felt up to attempting a fix.First step was to get he-for-whom-perspective-is-easy (aka the in-house art critic) into the studio to put strips of masking tape on the painting to give me the angles of the walls and roof. Second step was to paint these lines (in blue and white respectively), remove tape, and have it checked by he-for-whom-perspective-is-easy (aka “using the resources available to me” not “cheating”).
Third step was to re-establish dark as base of roof, then extend the roof’s lower edge. Which meant repainting the whole roof so it didn’t look extended. This is where using a limited number of colours is useful as it’s easy to colour match, to make a “fixed bit” feel integral.
Fourth step was to repaint wall to eliminate the white stripe, and the fifth the back wall and sky. Tweak, fiddle, faff, doubt, check, tweak, fiddle, faff, doubt, check, tweak … all of which got me to this point.
My problem now is deciding where to go with this painting, how to connect the house as it now is with the rest of the painting. Do I add detail everywhere to bring the rest of the composition towards the style of the house. Do I paint detail around the house only, going towards looser in most of the foreground? Do I keep the bright colours or subdue it?
For now it’s a painting that’s about a bit of perspective practice.
To be honest…I like the nonmathematical one better; reminds me of the little folkhouses in the Karroo. But no windows? Not very healthy from my ,working with TB or is it due to lockdown.
When I started painting this I hadn’t intended it to end up this realistic. The windows are on the other side of the house, to allow cross ventilation when the door is open…