Trying out the new paintbox: Type B London Bus

Another week, another bus. Except this wasn’t just any ordinary week. 6 years ago now I bought a Winsor and Newton watercolour set. I found it on special offer, and couldn’t believe my luck. Well, that was 6 years ago, since when I’ve completed the 30x30 watercolour challenge four times by my reckoning and that’s not counting all of the other watercolour paintings I’ve made with it. The thing is though all of my favourite colours, and all of the colours I use most in it are pretty much gone. So I did some research, and I’m giving a different make a try. This painting I’m going to show you my process photos of is the first I’ve made with it. I did make an ink sketch of it last year, like the trolleybus picture:- here's the ink sketch: - 

So, here is the first of the process photos that I took. I started yesterday on Friday evening.

So, as with the trolleybus I painted last weekend, I knew I was going to sketch the basic design first. Like that picture, this one is based on a black and white postcard. It was one of a series you could get from Ealing Libraries back in the 1970s. I started with the bus. It’s not, I’m sure, technically the ‘right’ way to do it. But I can’t help it. Primarily I paint for fun, and while I’ve tried doing things the way that books and tutorials say, I just can’t. I always revert to my own ways, wrong though they may be. As it is I got the bus proportions right pretty much first time, although I did make the passenger on the top right smaller while I was painting.

So here you see the whole piece of paper. It’s A4 again, and the bus is slightly right of centre. The next stage was to outline the buildings to the right of the bus. Like last weekend’s painting, this is the London Borough of Ealing, in the East of the borough in Acton High Street. Acton was where my dad grew up, although he was born in Battersea, and he grew up in Acton a few decades after the original photograph was taken.

So the basic outline of the buildings is begun here. I also sketched in the figures since I found them to be useful reference points for the building.

And there we are. This is as much detail as I wanted to do on the original sketch. It’s plenty to give me what I need to get the proportions right when I come to paint it. If anything it’s a little more detailed than I planned, but the back of the bus, and those adverts on it kind of necessitated it.

So it was taped to the board, and since there was plenty of daylight left on Friday evening I felt I could and should make headway before I left it for the night.

First job, as usual, was to paint in the sky. I would have given it a blue sky anyway, but even on a black and white photo I felt you could see that this was taken on a sunny day all those years ago. I also began to paint in the bus. My first thought was that the red was a little too crimson for my liking, but you know my thoughts – don’t pass judgement until the bus is complete with its interior painted in. I made a mistake not painting in the first layer of the roadway, but I rectified this by the next photo.

By the time I took this photo you can see that I had started painting the interior, seen from the rear. You can also see that I’s started painting in the adverts. The dark blue background to the letters was a bit of a no brainer. Apart from the fact that I have seen enamel signs from the time in this colour scheme, the blue makes such a contrast with the red of the bus. If you look to the left of the picture you can also see there’s a tram. In the photo I can’t be certain, but it does look like a London United Tramways tram, and dark blue and white was the colour scheme of these beauties.

The green oval sign on the back of the bus is actually an advert for Heinz, but I juet couldn’t do the lettering, It’s just too small. I had also made a good start on the underside of the bus, the wheels and tyres. I mentioned last week about my inability to focus on one aspect of a painting for very long. Well, you can see where my attention wandered in this photo in the way that I suddenly decided to paint in the passengers’ hats on top.

This is the photo I took when I finished up working on the painting on Friday evening and it gives you a good idea of how the light was going. I was about ready to finish anyway. I’d pretty much finish the bus. I’d painted in the top deck passengers, the red destinations on the boards, the brass rails and the advert on the side of the bus. I’d also made a start on the buildings. Not bad for one evening’s work.

So, a fresh start on Saturday morning. The first job was to apply the first creamy, sandy layer of colour to the main building.

It’s in this photo that I first really started to get an idea of what the finished painting was going to look like. The obvious thing is the dark brickwork on top of the first layer of paint on the building. However there’s also the green ornamental lamppost as well. I have it in my head that these posts might well have been green back in the day. However, even if they weren’t, it kind of looks okay.

Now the window and door frames have been applied and I am starting to be very pleased with the building. I think the dark green ornamental lamp which has just been added looks a treat. Putting in some of the windows helped as well

This photo shows where I used guesswork on the far right of the building, since this extends further than the cut off point for the photograph. I also painted in a little dark area on the roof just above and slightly to the right of the bus.

Can you see what I worked on between the previous photo and this one? It’s over on the far left. I added some shading to the wooden frame that the bloke with the cap is putting up, I also painted in part of a shadowy figure walking away from the camera on the extreme left. A few more details like the chimney on top of the white building on the left pretty much took care of that part of the painting. I also painted in the faces of the figures.

So this is the last process photo and by the time I took this the painting was more or less complete. I decided that the figures would have to be in brown, dark blue, greens and greys and I’m pretty happy with the way they worked out.

Type B Bus in Acton High Street

So this is the finished painting. I’m not sure that it’s as good as the trolleybus, but then it’s a rather more complicated subject for all that. As a first go with the new paint set I’m really rather pleased. I do think that with hindsight, if I was doing another London bus with it I would mix in some orange with the red to take it more towards the pillar box red which I wanted.