Making the most of artistic licence in Repton

I remembered this week that I haven’t yet shown the pencil drawing I did of Repton High Street just before Christmas. So now I can talk about it and more to the point show the photo and what was in it, and what I took out of it to make it a far more interesting drawing.  

The photo was taken, as you will have already noticed, on bin day. Which of course I didn’t know until I got there! Which is why I had to take a number of photos so that I knew what was behind those horrible eye-sores for any artist, mostly gates and steps, I realised.  I was also requested to “remove the Ford Focus’s” for this commission and certainly agreed that the picture was better without them. And also it was better without the street light, television aerials, telegraph pole and wires, For Sale sign, and since the picture wasn’t specifically for Christmas, the large Christmas tree outside the Bulls Head pub as well as the Christmas wreaths on the doors. Oh, and most definitely the yellow lines of course!

So this is the particular photo I used for my source photo, and you can see what I’ve taken out, and why!  This is what I saw, and this is how I made it look! Far better for the artistic licence. And although its a modern day photo, the drawing makes it look a bit more old fashioned, focusing not the the Ford Focus’s but on the important stuff, the lovely Victorian architecture of the pretty brick cottages and the really important focus of the village, the pub!