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Room for improvement

Room for improvement

 A picture that is nothing to do with my recent trip to Kent is this one. I started it a while back and had to put it on hold whilst I finished off commissions for clients, knowing that I would finish it when I had a lull – as is the way of an artist, rushes and lulls in the work load. Its done in pen and wash, which is a medium I really like for the freedom of the pale watercolour washes, but the thin black pen marks also adding to the structure of an old stone building and its textural architecture. I do love painting old structures like this one, imagining the people who built it from the local stone, and lives they lived in it, the families created there, working the land and striving to survive, time passing, and the families moving on, the building abandoned and falling into dis-repair, the weather taking its toll, winds raging around it bringing beating rain and biting snow, summer heat adding to the dryness of the wood, and then, one day, the roof falling in as timbers fail, the weight of the tiles becoming too much. But also knowing that at some point in the future someone will come along and want to renovate it, and bring it back to life, add more rooms and restore it with love and affection. The picture is called “Room for improvement” for that reason, and I know that a huge part of the desire in me to draw it is for the black roof timbers silhouetted against the blue sky behind, that and the lovely blues and ochres of the aged tiled roof.