I'd been passing by this crumbling old building on my regular walk for years before I got around to painting it.
I have painted it before, from the road. It featured in this painting I did back in '92 or '93, 'Albert Mansfield's place', which is what my old man called it when he recognized the place in the picture.
Finally I got around to taking the photograph that would act as the basis of the painting. The tree shadows did it for me. Some subjects just need a light effect to set them off, and I always like the challenge and reward of including a cast shadow in a painting. Shadows tell you so much: where the light is coming from, and what, unseen, lies outside the picture and casts the shadow, and the nature of the surface on which the shadow is cast. The challenge lies in managing tone and colour temperature and edges to make the shadow convincing, and the reward lies in the opportunities this presents for the use of rare and beautiful colour.
The photograph presented some difficulties with the composition. The original photograph included a strip of sky and the full height of the background trees, and the tangled tree shadow on the wall to the far left. I did a small watercolour study on site which told me this might present insoluble problems. I used GIMP to crop the photograph in various ways, and eventually settled on my usual 10" x 12" study format for the painting.
I took the painting to what I thought was a finished state, but put it away to get some mental distance from it. When I took it out again after a couple of weeks I saw that the foreground saplings had to go. They broke one of my own rules: Don't try to paint something through something. I rubbed out the saplings with a piece of sandpaper and repainted the wall.
I also took one of my most useful tools - two L shaped right angles of mount board - and decided on a new crop for the painting, cutting off the distracting and redundant two inches at the far left to end up with a 10" x 10" painting.
That seemed to solve all the composition problems.* Now the painting just had a few components that all worked together: the building, with its pointed roof, the tree shadow that sprawls across it, the trees in golden light behind the wall and the ivy bound tree in the middle, plus the foreground with its shadowy grass and reflecting stream.
I worked and reworked the wall, aiming for an effect of sun struck stone and brick. I did as much with the background trees, using texture and colour to add interest.
Any painting I can bring to a conclusion and in the process come up with a couple of tools to add to my inner toolbox, I'm happy.
Why Rapunzel? Every time I passed the building, it put me in mind of those Hockney etchings of Grimms fairy tale, and the contrast between that and the building's original purpose - it was a pig pen - made me smile.
* A square format has a kind of power of its own to please the eye. For many simple subjects with a frontal quality, it often ends up being the best choice.
I have painted it before, from the road. It featured in this painting I did back in '92 or '93, 'Albert Mansfield's place', which is what my old man called it when he recognized the place in the picture.
Finally I got around to taking the photograph that would act as the basis of the painting. The tree shadows did it for me. Some subjects just need a light effect to set them off, and I always like the challenge and reward of including a cast shadow in a painting. Shadows tell you so much: where the light is coming from, and what, unseen, lies outside the picture and casts the shadow, and the nature of the surface on which the shadow is cast. The challenge lies in managing tone and colour temperature and edges to make the shadow convincing, and the reward lies in the opportunities this presents for the use of rare and beautiful colour.
The photograph presented some difficulties with the composition. The original photograph included a strip of sky and the full height of the background trees, and the tangled tree shadow on the wall to the far left. I did a small watercolour study on site which told me this might present insoluble problems. I used GIMP to crop the photograph in various ways, and eventually settled on my usual 10" x 12" study format for the painting.
I took the painting to what I thought was a finished state, but put it away to get some mental distance from it. When I took it out again after a couple of weeks I saw that the foreground saplings had to go. They broke one of my own rules: Don't try to paint something through something. I rubbed out the saplings with a piece of sandpaper and repainted the wall.
I also took one of my most useful tools - two L shaped right angles of mount board - and decided on a new crop for the painting, cutting off the distracting and redundant two inches at the far left to end up with a 10" x 10" painting.
That seemed to solve all the composition problems.* Now the painting just had a few components that all worked together: the building, with its pointed roof, the tree shadow that sprawls across it, the trees in golden light behind the wall and the ivy bound tree in the middle, plus the foreground with its shadowy grass and reflecting stream.
I worked and reworked the wall, aiming for an effect of sun struck stone and brick. I did as much with the background trees, using texture and colour to add interest.
Any painting I can bring to a conclusion and in the process come up with a couple of tools to add to my inner toolbox, I'm happy.
Why Rapunzel? Every time I passed the building, it put me in mind of those Hockney etchings of Grimms fairy tale, and the contrast between that and the building's original purpose - it was a pig pen - made me smile.
* A square format has a kind of power of its own to please the eye. For many simple subjects with a frontal quality, it often ends up being the best choice.
