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