Tram painting

I did say in my last post that I reckoned that I had a good 10 hours of work to put in to finish the London tram painting. Here's where I was at that stage: -

Here's the photos which show the progress I've made in the last fortnight: -

I'd estimate that I've had my ten hours and I'm not that close to a finish yet. What the hell, I'm really enjoying it. I go through stages in terms of my feelings about the painting I'm making while I'm making it. I start off with optimism then start thinking it's rubbish, then start falling in love with it as glimpses emerge of what the finished painting will be. That's the stage I'm at for the moment. Of course, after I finish I get all critical again, but that's just the way that it goes. I'm really pleased with the front end of the tram at the moment. How much I'm going to work the painting now I don't really know, but I know that at a minimum I have to do the shop fronts immediately behind the tram, and then I need to do the extreme right hand side of the painting. Watch this space.

What have I been doing, then?

Well, not a lot of acrylic painting, to be honest with you. In fact the only reason why I've shaken myself up to post on this, my original art blog - the mother ship, if you like, is because I've started only my first acrylic for a few months. We'll come to that. So what's been going on, then?

1) My Spanish expedition. This took up three weeks of August, and I made tons of ink sketches, and ink and wash sketches. You can see all of these over on my sister blogs "An English Fool Abroad with his sketchbook" and "South Wales Urban Sketcher"

2) My commitment to make at least one sketch in whatever medium every day for a whole year. I began on 26th March, and have so far kept it up every day, having reached just over the 200 day mark.

3) Inktober 2018. The commitment is to produce an ink sketch every day for the month of October, following a prompt.

4) The last of my children to move out has found herself a flat. I've coveted what was her bedroom for several years, and it's now become my studio. I've put up some of my bits and pieces on the wall, and it's a nice place to paint and draw now.

5) I've been working on an acrylic again. With the Artist's group starting up again, I spent the first couple of Wednesdays just working on sketches, but felt that I wanted to be working on a proper painting. So it's back to my lovely old trams. My current painting is an old London tram in the 1950s in South London, right at the end of the first generation tram era. Here it is.

It's a shame that I didn't take photographs in its earlier stages, since the sky was truly horrendous this time a week ago, and I'm quite pleased with the way I've 'rescued' it. As for today, well, on the original sketched design the figures on the left were too small in proportion to the building, but I corrected it when I started painting them in today. I'd make a rough estimate that there's at least 10 hours of work left in it.