More Ealing Watercolours

 Cut to the chase, Dave. OK. SO, yesterday I had a hankering to paint part of the towpath of he Grand union Canal, where the old sight of St. Bernard's hospital backs onto the towpath. I just wanted to get on with it too, so I set myself the challenge of making a direct watercolour. In case you  have forgotten (wouldn't blame you) a direct watercolour is painted directly onto the paper, without any helpful sketching in pencil or any other medium to guide you. This is what I painted:-

As a direct watercolour, it's okay. I took ages over the brickwork and I think that's come out quite nicely. As a straight watercolour - meh. There are perspective issues with the building, which is grade II listed and was supposedly once a brewery.  A for effort, C- for execution. Being as it's half term week, I didn't have any reason why I couldn't paint again this morning and so that's what I did. 

I like this a lot more. For one thing I don't see the issues with perspective. Shouldn't do , mind you, because I did sketch in pencil. Mind you, I did it differently than I've done before. Really and truly I just sketched in the skyline first, then painted in the sky I was deliberately going for muted, softer colours today. Then while the sky was drying I just added more pencil details. Then painted some areas in, then sketched again and so forth.

I rubbed out the pencil lined until I could only just see then as I went along. It's a pretty similar view to this one I painted last summer:-

- although this one was some 20 or 30 years earlier, and the colours are much brighter. I think that somewhere between the two will possibly be as good as I can get it.