COMMISSIONS

People I meet at my exhibiting events often ask me about how I make my work. Read on to learn about my typical process for a commission.

Caversham Weir Commission

I'm known for my unique response to urban landscape,  and a local resident asked me to make a small painting based on Caversham Weir in Reading.

After the formalities, the first activity was researching the subject. It happened to be a pleasant day when I carried out my site visit around the lock and weir area, and View Island. I took plenty of photographs from various positions to gather information, and perused them back in the studio with my sketchbook ready to begin working out ideas. Here's a small selection from dozens of photos that were taken:

In the studio...

I sometimes combine elements from different views to give the spirit or feel of a place rather than an exact rendition. It’s to do with finding a balance or dialogue between the subject and the “right” composition.

I work with a grid system, and use it to determine the layout of a composition.

Here you can see me calculating how many divisions of the weir I will put into the work, to suggest the many, rather than trying to put in the actual number.

Also I’m exploring how to simplify the machinery to avoid the work becoming too fussily detailed.

Here are two studies with the weir divisions and structures worked out, sitting within the grid, and I’ve started to think about the distribution of tones and textures, mainly in monochrome. The background buildings and greenery shapes are being laid in, and I’m also thinking about how to handle the “foam” of the water pouring through the weir. A variety of dots and dashes to begin with.

Further work considers the colour palette, which I have kept consistent with other work that I do. What, for example, is the right pink, and set of greens that this work needs? I also had to work out the water reflections and the axis on which that would be based. The lower right study is on a piece of the actual paper to be used, and the sky and water treatments are becoming resolved.

By this point I had also decided on a humorous touch with a visual “quote” from the mural on the nearby turbine structure, a blue water drop character.

My client fed back to me on colour choices, and it was then possible to move onto the actual production. The foaming water is made by carefully wetting passages of the painting, and allowing white watercolour crayon shavings to fall on it through a stencil.

Here you can see the two versions in progress on the same board. The paper is stretched and the composition dimensions drawn out with grids. The upper piece uses a 3mm grid, while the lower piece uses a 4mm grid. As well as the open sketchbook, notice also a circle template, pots of premixed acrylic, and a ruling pen.

When completed they were both framed up, and one selected by my client. This is the other original, looking splendid in its bespoke frame with deep mount and truevue museum glass.
(A giclee print is available of this work, let me know here if you'd like more details).