A house in South-West London

I was commissioned to paint a picture of this lovely house.

This interesting commission took me to a part of London I had not previously explored. Many thanks to the new owner of this painting for allowing me to post it online.

One of the delights of these houses is the chimneys. They sit up there like chess pieces, or individual characters in a play. I tried to show their personalities.

I painted this in November. It was cold, but there were still leaves on the trees. They blew around in the wind and scattered on the road. A road sweeper, a café proprietor, and a woman with a pram all came over at different times to look at my work. I made a preliminary sketch on brown paper to understand how to compose the picture, how the perspective worked and where the light and dark should be. The next stage is the pencil underdrawing, then the pen, then watercolour.

Here you see the difference the colour makes:

The colours are: Buff Titanium, Perylene Maroon, Prussian Blue, Hansa Yellow Mid, Burnt Umber, Fired Gold Ochre. Fired Gold Ochre is “granulating” – it dries unevenly into a pattern of dots. You can see the effect in the brick texture of the house nearest us. The chimneys are Fired Gold Ochre with some Transparent Pyrrol Orange. The greys and black are mixed from Prussian Blue and Perylene Maroon. All the watercolours are Daniel Smith.

The ink I use is De Atramentis Document Ink, Black, which is waterproof, supplied by The Writing Desk. The paper is Arches Aquarelle 300gsm cold-pressed, in a block 12″ x 9″. All paints and paper are from Jacksons Art.

Here is the picture being wrapped ready to go to its new home.