Project: Old Glasgow Tram

I had a choice this morning between getting on with painting the Messerschmidt Bubble Car, or posting some paintings I've just sold. Decency prevailed and I went packaged then went out and posted the paintings.

As regards the Messerschmidt, I've found over this last couple of weeks that I've started taking on two or three projects at the same time. I sketched the drawing onto the canvas before I sketched either the Hawk or the Heinkel Trojan, but for some reason it just hasn't demanded me to paint it, and since it's not a commission, then there hasn't been an imperative to get on with it.

Going back to the paintings I posted this morning, one of them was a painting of a tram. Something occurred to me as I was posting it. Every picture I've made of a tram - a couple of paintings and a charcoal sketch - have been bought. So . . . well, to cut a long story short it occurred to me that since I don't have another tram painting to sell at the moment, then perhaps it might be an idea to start. I haven't put any paint on the canvas yet, but I've sketched the design down, and here it is: -

Glasgow Tram - sketch onto canvas

I don't often put a lot of shading into a sketch on canvas. For one thing, the graphite can mix with the paint with rather unpleasant results if you're not careful. For another, the pencil lines really don't need to be that much more than outlines for guidance.  However, I have shaded in the cobbles in this picture, simply because I find that making any kind of textured road surface is difficult and painstaking work - my hope is that the shading will give more of an idea of how to do it.