Ealing Watercolours *11) The former Himalaya Palace CInema

 This is one of Ealing's Grade II* listed buildings - the former Himalaya Palace Cinema. It's stunning. The original cinema on this site, the Paragon Palace, was built in 1912, but when it was acquired by the United Picture Theatres Ltd. Company they pulled it down in about 1928, ad erected this building, which opened in November 1929. It closed in 1982, and became an indoor market, then reopened as a cinema in 2001. Sadly it closed in 2010 and became a market again. It was grade II listed in 1980 and upgraded to Grade II* in 1998. Quite right too, since it is the only cinema ever built in this particular oriental style ever in the UK.

I will admit that while I have looked at the building many times - often from the top deck of a 207 bus, I never actually watched a film there. The Odeon in Northfields Avenue was much closer - and that too is an equally stylish building, albeit in a completely different style. My father was in the habit of being given money by my mum to take us to the cinema. He'd present us with a choice - I can take you to the cinema now, but that's it, or I can take you to Rossi's now, buy you an ice cream and then I'll take you to see the film in Southall next week when it's there.- The point being that if he did this he'd save enough money to buy himself a bottle of cider. Of course, he wouldn't keep up his end of the bargain to take us to the film the next week. Choosing to take the cinema today rather than the ice cream didn't work. His reaction to a refusal was often ' Right, you're being greedy, so I'm not taking you at all now.' While it would be nice to say this was just one little foible and that he was good most of the time, it would be an utter lie. He was a bit pants as a dad. In fact if I'm honest, he was a lot pants. In fact without wanting to overstress the matter, he was the whole underwear drawer. Enough about him. So - I tried to produce something on a par with my last painting of the Hanwell Clock Tower. 

I did make an ink sketch of the Himalaya Palace last year : - 

I hope you can see what I like about the building just from the ink sketch. Here's the sketch I made today: -

I didn't use the same reference photo. Today's reference photo was taken sometime between the reopening in 2001 ad the reclosing in 2010. I'll be honest, I did not take process photos other than this. My feeling was that it was going to be a more complicated painting than he clock tower. It bloomin' was too. The irony of doing a much larger building like this one means that you're painting every thing in a smaller scale. Now, until recently I'd have made a sketch like this completely freehand. I will come clean. For several of my Ealing pictures I've used a ruler when I've been making the original sketch. It takes a bit longer - making just this sketch took me 2 hours this morning. 

So - you remember the two lessons I tried to apply when I made the previous painting? 1) Be creative with the sky. Again I've gone for yellow, but added a light blue streak at both top and bottom. Since the yellow was wet they kind of coalesced so that while it's more yellow further down, it's almost greeny further up. 2) Try hard not to overwork it. If anything I was even more likely to overwork this one than the previous one since it has so much going on in it, and there's so much detail. I hope that I haven't. 

So here it is:-

I like it and I'm pleased with it. Not as much as with the Hanwell Clock, but then that one turned out pretty much exactly the way that I wanted it to. This one, well, I don't really know how I wanted it to turn out.