Peter Barnett first enrolled on our Painting and Drawing course and was awarded a Distinction. Peter has now enrolled on our Oil Painting course and this is one of the paintings from the first set of assignments. We are absolutely delighted with Peters oil painting of ‘Loftwen’ and you can read Peters description below….
The cottage.
Loftwen is a derelict cottage in Llanwrtyd Wells in Wales. It is my first work from drawings on location. Repeated work on the stonework to get the detail but to reflect also the ‘organised randomness’ of the stone shapes and how they fit together. The right section of the front wall is collapsing and this proved very problematical. I tried lots of combinations of shades and colour to get the effect of the side wall in the shadow and the front wall in the sunshine. Overall a pleasing result.
The Tree.
I have done conventional tree views with broad trunk, roots, branches and leaves. I wanted to try a tree that was all foliage and to build up the layers. Happy with this. Lots of work on finding ways to get the sunlight to catch the outer leaves.
The Foreground Grass.
The most challenging of all. Some aspects are pleasing, the overall colour balance and tone for example. However, despite many repeated attempts, I have not cracked thin lines in oils. I am pleased with the thickening of the paint into the foreground. Not so happy with this, even though the most time and research was put here.
The Red Kite.
Surprising difficult to get the angles right for the wings and the shading correct. Many of the issues connected with the small size of the bird – tiny error magnified. Again difficulties with thin lines.
