Glasgow Tram - Acrylic Project - 3

 I recall that I did say last week that I thought that I was unlikely to be able to find time to work on the tram in a school week, and I was right. Yeah, it's a pain, but painting trams doesn't pay all the bills (yet) and teaching English does.

Here's where we finished on Sunday:-

It seemed a convenient place to stop, and I'd guess it took between 6 and 7 hours to get this far. The plan when I took up my tools this morning was to firstly sketch in the rest of the outlines of the windows, paint in the remaining shop front - paint a background colour for the walls between the windows, paint in the frames, paint in the brickwork, paint in the details in the windows, do any remedial work necessary on what we did last time, and finally, if all else had gone well, paint in the roadway shadows and cobbles, sign and date the whole thing.

This is my first progress photo today

By this time you can see that I'd sketched the outlines and then immediately painted in the background colour for the walls. My feeling was this - if I painted these before I did the remaining shopfront, then the walls could dry while I was doing the shopfront, and it would be easier to paint on frames and bricks on dry paint. By the way, at the top of the photo is just shadow cast through the window by the bright morning Autumn sunshine. 

Having now completed the shop fronts I was just starting to be able to visualise the finished painting. This is a dangerous time for me. In the early stages of painting, I tend to think what I do is rubbish and want to give it up and start again. Experience has taught me the value of patience and perseverence. However this often gives way to a stage of believing that the current work is going to turn out to be the best thing I've ever done. This is invariably equally untrue. You might also notice that as well as finishing the shop fronts, I've just added some colour inside what will become the windows. 

I've painted this typically scottish kind of brickwork several times before, most notably on painting of Glasgow, but also one of Edinburgh. I love painting this kind of brickwork, the tones ranging from warm honey to bournville dark chocolate, with undertones of purples and greys. Hopefully you can see what a difference it makes when the windows have been painted in as well.

Not far off from a finish now. This is where I stopped for lunch, after about 3 hours ' work this morning. The building is complete now, obviously. Can you notice what else I did between this picture and the last? Well, firstly I lightened the green at the front of the tram, and a couple of patches n the side. I like the fact that the tram is so bright and vibrant against the more restrained building and shop fronts, but I thought it could stand to be just toned down slightly. Also, if you look underneath the tram I've done just a little work adding more shadow, and I've painted the tram lines. 

I could have stopped there. However, I do think that without the shadows on the roadway, the poor old ar looks as if it's floating somewhat. So here's the finished picture, after I put the shadow on the roadway, and added some definition to the cobblework.

It's far too soon for me to give a realistic appraisal of my own work here - it'll take at least a week before I'll be able to be at all objective, but I certainly think it's good enough to put up for sale - and that's the next thing I shall be doing with it.  At the very least I think it fares well be comparison with two of my other Glasgow street n' tram scenes - although to be fair, both of these were 16x12, not 20x16 like this one.

Acrylic Project: Tram part 2

 Right, this is where I stopped yesterday:-

In my last post I note a couple of areas I planned to work on in today's session - sorting out the rather messy sky and softening it a bit, painting in a base colour to the roadway in front of the tram, and completing the tram itself. Here's the first of three in progress photos I took on my phone during today's session:-

I took this one after doing some remedial work on the sky, and painting in a lot of the window details on the tram. Yu have to look closely, but you can just about see that I've added a little more yellow to the orange section at the front of the tram, which isn't quite so in yer face now. I've also added the cream trim and the cream coloured frames around the window. In the window I've sed a pthalo blue, with just a touch of black added to it. When I started out using acrylics I had a very simplistic approach to shadows - ah, dark shadow, where's me black? I didn't really understand it when other artists would say that they tried to avoid using black as much as possible, but I do now. Black, for want of a better way of phrasing it, is often just too black. 

You might just notice as well that I have done a little work on starting to paint in a bit of the detail on the figure on the left.

Just as there comes a point in every painting when you start to seriously consider jacking it in, throwing the canvas in the bin and starting all over again, there also comes a point when you start to think it might work, and might just turn out to be one of the best things you've done. This thought is no more to be trusted than the impulse to throw it in the bin. Still, this was the point where it starte to happen to me. Just starting to paint the shop front had the effect of anchoring the tram to the rest of the painting. I also rather like the change from the blue section of the oad to the yellowMy feeling is that the tram should be the most colourful and eye catching thing in the whole painting, and so I've used a lot of diluted acrylic for the shop fronts.

I've been really enjoying painting the shop fronts, which comes as a bit of a surprise to me. After about 3 and a half hours of painting I was ready to pack away, but I did do what I also did yesterday, and drew in some more of the details, this time of the windows above the shop fronts. I'm happier with the sky now, and I'm also pleased that I managed to resist the rather strong urge I had to paint the shadows onto the roadway. That will probably be one of the last things I do.

I'm looking forward to the next session, which may be as far away as Saturday next, because I plan to start painting in the brickwork. I really enjoy painting the bricks on Glasgow buildings like this one. I have painted a relatively similar scene before:-

It was my decision to put the old chap into it, which isn't the smartest idea I've ever had, but hey, if you don't try you'll never know. This was a 12x16 canvas, whereas the one I'm working on is 16x20, and details are easier to achieve on a larger canvas. It is a nice demonstration of what I mean y the brickwork of this particular kind of Glasgown building. I can't help wondering if it's the same street, with the older painting being just a little further down the street. 

Acrylic Project: Tram

 It's been a good week, First of all I sold my acrylic painting of the London Tram on Highgate Hill: - 

London Tram on Highgate Hill

I like this 20x16 painting a lot, but I've had two years of pleasure from it now, and so it just felt like time to let it go. Then, a couple of days later, I also sold this painting of a vintage Lisbon tram, based on one of my friends' holiday snaps.

Vintage Lisbon Tram

Again, it's a painting I'm pretty find of. I painted it while I was off work with depression in 2017 and I've had a hankering to visit Lisbon ever since. Still, it's quite a while since I painted anything in acrylic, and even then it was a copy of Frank Brangwyn's painting of a market in Tunisia. So I reckoned that if I sold a couple then I'd have a couple of display spaces on my wall that need filling, which would act as a spur to get me working again. Well, that and I'd have a few quid into the bargain. 

There's no prizes for guessing that I was going to make another tram painting. I love trams, and I've sold over 15 paintings or drawings I've made of trams over the last 5 years. Being as yesterday was Saturday and not a school day I panned a start by going to the post office at 9 am to post the Lisbon painting. That changed when my wife, daughter and grandson needed a lift to Neath, and I didn't get back from posting the painting until some time after 10. I couldn't rouse myself to get going until after 12.

Normally I'd sketch out as much of a design as possible before applying paint to canvas. I made a conscious decision to do this one differently. I sketched the outline of the tram to the size I wanted, then applied the detail in the tram, and then just the barest details of the background - the edge of the building to the left of the picture, the figure by the pavement edge and the car to the right, and the treeline. 

I'm not as quick as I once was, but I doubt I was more than about 20 minutes sketching. I was experiencing that wonderful frisson you get when you're about to start applying acrylic to a canvas. The obvious choice was to paint in the sky first. It's not perfect - I like the streaky clouds, but I plan to do a little more work next session to soften it and also to tone down the brightness a little. 

Most of the session was spent working on the tram itself. The big idea was to get the main body done, that's the window framework, the green panels and the orange panels. I also started work on the underside. It would probably have been more sensible and more disciplined to have painted in the trees to the right before I actually started on tram or car, but hey, I'm not a professional artist and I don't claim to paint in a traditional (or sensible) way. So I painted the car, and only then moved onto the trees. Using combinations of three hues of green and one blue and a touch of grey, I'm really rather pleased with the way that the trees turned out. I painted in the figure with one colour, but I'm going to apply detail to him in the next session. Finally, I finished by applying a watery wash of blue grey to the ground. I stopped where I did because I want the ground in front of the tram to have a farm more yellowy tinge.

I took this o my phone when I'd finished applying paint for the session. I can see that the sky, particularly in the centre of it, needs some remedial work, and I want to soften the blue a bit. The ground needs some detail applying to it, but there' still tramlines and shadow to be added, so hopefully the car and the tram won't continue to look as if they are floating on top of it. The front of the tram is too orange and will also need some work.

I'd been at it for the best part of 3 and a half hours by this point, and didn't want to apply any more paint in this session. Still, rather than finishing at this point, it did strike me that I might well want to start painting the buildings on the right in the next session, so I began to draw in some outlines and guidelines. By the tie I packed up and cleared away for the day I'd been working for a shade over 4 hours in total. 

I have mixed feelings about the painting at this stage. I'm pretty pleased with the composition - I like the position and the size of the tram. But it's at the stage where you have to have faith that it's going to get better as you add details and work on it. I'm finding it difficult to envisage what the ground will look like once the shadows and some cobble details have been added, but I have to have faith that it will work. Everything on the painting is looking pretty bright, but hopefully the dark shop level of the buildings will give a contrast, as will the dark details visible through the windows of the tram. The one grey window I've already painted in just gives a hint about how this may turn out. 

Even when I do make plans I very rarely stick to them. Allowing for that, then, I would like to finish the tram in the next session. I also think it would be a good idea to work on the sky before tackling the upper portions of the building, although I would like to get the shop fronts in. I will also lay down a base colour for the roadway in front of the tram, although finishing off the roadway will probably be one of the last jobs that I'll do, after the building. It's taken about 4 hours to get this far. Going on recent form I reckon there's maybe 10 hours left in this one now

Commercial Project: Glasgow Tram

 

I’ve been back at work since Tuesday. I’m an English teacher in a local comprehensive – 11-16 school. So time has been at something of a premium. I promised myself, though, that I was going to try to make another picture to sell. I thought it might be an interesting post to take you through my process again.

 The last picture I sold a couple of days ago was my ink and watercolour picture of a Glasgow tram in the National Tramways Museum. So I decided to go for a Glasgow tram again, but this time, a Glasgow tram on the streets of Glasgow. Every picture I’ve ever made of Glasgow trams has sold, so it’s a little bit of a no-brainer.

 I got caught up in what I was doing and forgot to take any photographs until I was about half an hour into it, so there’s already a lot done in this first picture. The plan was to complete the sketch last night, scan it, and then apply the paint today. I started this one with the tram, and then started on the buildings to the immediate right.

 

I felt happier once I reached this point, since those buildings just peeping out behind the tram do at least tie it into the rest of the sketch.

This was the photo I took at the end of the evening, when the sketch was complete. It’s funny how one small detail can make such a difference, but prior to drawing in the car on the left, the whole picture looked terribly unbalanced. 

So this is the scan, which most clearly shows where I would have left the picture if I wasn’t going to add watercolour.

 

This was just before I started applying paint this morning. A couple of things to note. I used a board, and taped the picture to the board, This was to try to prevent the paper wrinkling. It’s only sketch book paper, 150g/m2, so it wasn’t really meant to be painted on, but this is one thing I can do which helps. The other thing is that the photo shows the most important aspect of my preparation before I start painting – a cup of coffee.

 

First for paint were the roadway surface, and the sky. The roadway is wet in the original reference, and I tried to get this across using base colours of blue, purple and grey, with yellow reflections in front of the tram. I wetted the appropriate areas before applying the paint, so that the colours would mingle into each other at the edges, then allowed them to pretty much dry before continuing.

 

Next I went for the brightest colours in the whole painting, the windows and the sign of the Woolworths store, and the green and orange of the tram. I was tempted to leave the picture like this, but I often have issues trying to decide just how far to go with a painting and when to stop and leave it as it is.

 

Purple, brown and blue, in different amounts of each, were what I used for the rather drab background buildings. The Woolworths store was completed with a creamy brown mixture, with highlighted bricks in browny purple.

That’s where I left it. Once dry, I scanned it, and you can see the scan below. The only problem with scanning is that I find it isn’t true to the colours. The photograph gives a better idea, but even that isn’t quite true to how it actually looks. Still, it’s now on sale, all for an outlay of 3 hours’ work last night, and another hour this morning.