After the Rain

After the Rain
(Work in Progress)
Watercolour on Paper
24cm x 34cm (9.5" x 13.5")

Happy New Year

Yesterday was the Shelford Group of Artists’ first painting day of 2014.

Tony Slater's theme for the day was "After the Rain". His intention was for us to paint street scenes including reflections in wet roads and pavements.

There is still a lot to do before I paint the reflections, but I’m glad I ran out of time because there is something not right with the foreground figure – he has the shambling gait of a zombie. I will sort this out before I paint him. The solution may be as simple as sloping his shoulders slightly down to the right, but I will probably redraw him.

I took the figures from a number of different photographs. Tony was pleased I drew their heads close to the same horizontal line – the horizon. It is a classic mistake to make distant figures smaller by moving their heads down the page instead of moving their feet up the page.

In linear perspective, the horizon line is the eyelevel of the viewer / artist. Parallel lines appear to converge to a vanishing point on the horizon. Anything the same height above the ground as the viewer’s eyes will appear to be on the horizon line no matter how near or far it is from the viewer.

Horizon Line = Eyelevel

The letters on the signs set the tone for the whole painting. I want the writing to be legible because the shop is a landmark in Newark (the English one), but I am no sign writer. I was deliberately carefree (careless?) when I painted the text and need to carry this through into the rest of the picture.