More Heritage

Old Town Hall (1st stage)

I started another of the "Heritage Buildings" pictures at the Club today. I feel like I'm really flying by the seat of my pants with this one. The colours with which I've laid it in are much more exaggerated than I might normally use, mainly because the subject is so difficult. The Old Town Hall is a nice enough old Victorian building, but it's difficult to get a good look at it it, or indeed take a decent photograph. To get the reference photograph I'm using, I had to stand on a grass verge at the other side of a motorway.

As a consequence, to try to make it an interesting composition, I cranked up the colour in the sky and the Sage in the background. As the picture progresses, it's possible the colour will be played down again and simply become more complex, but I have no real idea if this will happen.

But then, that's half the fun of painting: the not knowing. Richard Diebenkorn said:

I can never accomplish what I want, only what I would have wanted had I thought of it beforehand.