Project 7: Townscape with Buildings and Figures

Now the Studies have been completed its time for the Final Design.

I have really enjoyed doing the studies in Oil Paints; I have really loved using them and find them a really exciting medium to use once you get the hang of working wet on wet all the time. I have a lot to learn about Oil Paints before I would use them for big paintings not only that but I wouldn’t have enough time for the medium to dry if I did it in oils? I didn’t realise how different it would be painting in Oil Paints I have found them totally different to acrylic paints, you need to develop another set of skills to use them correctly. I feel that now I have actually used oil paints I could get addicted to this medium very easily.

Choosing the canvas size and medium for the Final Design.

I have chosen to use a A1 canvas board, this is the largest size I have in stock I would like to use bigger but to my knowledge nobody makes them any larger. I don’t like using canvas as every time I buy one it seems to have dents in the and sometimes I can’t get the dints out. The first thing I will do is to transfer the image to a larger canvas by gridding; because the ratio of the A1 canvas board is slightly different I will have to add more of the building at the top rather than stretching the image to fit the canvas. I’ve decided to carry on with the same image for the final design that I have used in the studies, I’m not sure if I will change anything about the composition or add anything to the design yet.

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I started off with gridding a black and white print out of the image I wanted to transfer to the canvas panel for the final design. I wouldn’t normally use a grid just freehand it but I needed to get the main perspective correct to start off with. Once the main lines were in place I could do what I wanted and change whatever I decided to do as long as everything was going in the correct direction.

The windows were really hard to do and they took ages to get looking okay. I wanted to show more of the windows then what were shown on the source photograph. It must have taken a day just to get the windows correct at the end I was fed up with the bloody thing. Other details from the Debenhams building were also added. 

Debenhams has a large dominate clock that is on the building I wanted to show it even though it was just out of sight on the photograph. I had a little extra space to play with on top of the building due to the ration but I had to lower the clock by one row of the windows to fit into the picture.

The buildings in the background looked quite boring so I looked at another photograph which shows a slightly different angle. These buildings are just a little bit further back on my original photograph but I decided to bring them forward a bit. As you can see from this photograph the buildings are actually there and I’m not just putting any building there I have just moved them forward a touch. I felt that the Arndale building itself was an important historic building and now everyone for sure knows we are in Manchester because of this building.

The largest building is the Arndale centre which is an important building before the arnadale and the closed of shopping area it use to be a busy main road.

On the original photograph the cable runner is placed at the back of the tram. However I looked at loads of photographs that I took and a lot of them also had them at the front, I supposed it depends on which way the tram is going, is there a drivers part at both ends of the tram?

The original photography had only a couple of letters from the shop sign but I wanted to show the shops full name. I looked at the shop sign and draw a serif font. Shop dummies were also added; these are from Debenhams display windows but were taken from images I found off the internet.

The tram doesn’t go straight it actually comes from round the corner, I’m not 100% happy with it at the moment might have to have another look at it. On the original photograph I thought the tram went straight and not round the corner as there were two figures in the way.

Project 7: Townscape with Buildings and Figures

Final Piece - Study in Oil Paints 2

As I don’t have much of a clue with Oil Paints I’m learning by my mistakes as I go along. The mistake I did on the last Oil Study was that the pencil I used to do the drawing with it mixed in with the oil paints and made the colour look very dirty. This time I wanted to see what happens if I use fixative on top of the pencil before adding the oil paints. I did some research on this subject and all reports are saying its fine to do so, however I don’t know how these will look in 100 years’ time whether it will affect the oil paints nobody really knows. I wasn’t going to freehand the drawing again so I put a grid on in Photoshop and just copied the photograph on to a small 5”x7” canvas board. I decided to do it on a small board as it might stop me from fiddle as much as the tip of the brush will be too big.

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The drawing was quickly transferred to a small 5x7" canvas board by using a grid system.  
The first signs were good using the fixative seems to have done the trick. The colours seem very vivid without any of the graphite pencil mixed in, I also used quite a bit of medium to thin the first layer you can still see some of the pencil marks.

Some of the characters were taken from the original photograph and the others were added randomly from the imagination

The study is done and I’m quite happy with it and now I’m ready to move do a final piece on a larger scale.

Project 7: Townscape with Buildings and Figures

Final Piece: Oil Study 1

I’m over whelmed with the amount of photographs I took for research, I have just looked through all the photographs again and I’m finding it hard just to pick one that fills the criteria. All it asks for is Townscape with buildings and figures and to be honest every photograph taken in Manchester has buildings and people in it, it’s hard to take one that hasn’t got these elements in them. Due to time restrictions I’ve had a quick look and I have chosen the image below. What I like about the image is the one point perspective and all the dynamic lines going to the visual point. The image also shows a Metrolink tram which can be seen all over the city centre, also the large old building which is now Debenhams has been there for a long time. The building is a Grade II listed building and was built in 1932, before Debenhams it was Rylands & Sons and can be seen in Lowry’s Piccadilly Gardens from 1954.

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I drew the image with a pencil onto a 16"x12" canvas board, it wasn't perfect but I’ll do the alterations with the paint and it was only a study in Oils. I've only ever used Oils once before but it was a monochrome painting and I ended up buying a small box of Pebeo Studio XL Oils for around £20. The first thing I noticed is that the pencil marks I made were mixing in with the yellow and it was turning it into a real dirty colour. As one of the elements requirements were figures I started to add some into the painting taken from the photographs that I took for the research. I didn't want to go too far with the study as I still wasn't happy with the pencil marks mixing in with the paint, you learn by your mistakes so I know not to do it the same way again.

Finished for now Oil Study 01

Project 7: Townscape with Buildings and Figures

Facing Debenhams, Market Street.

The below paintings have been taken from a photograph I took whilst I was down Manchester gathering research. The first one is a watercolour study, it was produced pretty quickly I didn’t want to get bogged down with spending hours on all the detail as I usually do I wanted a quick remediation.

 

Original Photograph, taken looking at Debenhams, Manchester.

 A Quick Watercolour Study.

A Quick Acrylic Study.

Project 7: Townscape with Buildings and Figures

Different areas in Manchester City Centre.

Manchester Exchange Square was totally rebuilt in 1996 after the RIA bomb attacks; pubs were dismantled and re assembled in different positions. Around the Exchange Square you will find The Shambless pub, a new entrance to the Arndale Centre, Urbis, The Print Works, The Manchester Wheel, The Triangle Shopping Centre and the large outdoor TV screen. Market Street is a pedestrian zone bustling with shoppers which includes the Food Court, Arndale Centre and loads of shops on one main stretch which runs from Piccadilly Gardens to St. Ann’s Square. Piccadilly Gardens was transformed in 2002 it’s no longer a green open space area filled with homeless drunks drinking cider. If it wasn’t for the buildings surrounding the area unfortunately you would not be able to recognize it compared against Lowry’s Piccadilly Gardens (1954).

If you didn’t know Manchester or even if you do you couldn’t name all the squares and little areas with their own name in the city centre they all just roll into one its hard the distinguish where one starts and the other one begins. Other squares around Manchester are Albert Square, St Peter's Square, St Ann's Square, Motor Street Square, Catalan Square, Stephenson Square, Cathedral Gardens, Parsonage Gardens, Shambles Square, Crown Square and Great Northern Square even I don’t know a few of these.

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Barton Arcades, St Anns Square.

This study is the entrance of Barton Arcades looking from St Anne’s Square in the city centre of Manchester. Barton Arcade is a Victoria building which has 3 tiers with a glass roof, the building is a grade II listed historic building. I have worked from photograph number which I took whilst in Manchester. I think the reason I did it was the one point perspective, I have used Conte Crayons I purchased a small box of four a while ago for a couple of quid as I wanted to see the difference between these and soft pastels but never got round to using them. All four colours have been used in this study, Black, White, Bistre and Sanguine on cartridge paper.

I like the feel of them how you can blend them like pastels but they are a lot harder. They also tend to stay on the paper better when you use fixative, when I use pastels with fixative the white and all the light colours tend to disappear and you have to re add them without fixative at the end. I didn’t draw an under drawing I just went for it and it took an hour or so to complete. Over all I like the Conte Crayons and will be investing into a 48 set rather than using pastels, the study isn’t brilliant but I can recognize where the study was from.

Looking towards the top of Exchange Square. A study of the Manchester Exchange area is another study I used the Conte Crayons with but as my palette was very limited I had to add a couple of greens and a blue soft pastel into the creation. This time I have used some pastel paper which has more tooth then the cartridge paper of the previous study, the paper is also a bluey grey colour which I left for blank for the colour of the sky.

I thought it would benefit added a light source as there wasn’t much of one on the photograph. The tree I enjoyed doing it really stands out amongst the browns of the buildings. In the picture you see both new additions with the old buildings to the Manchester skyline. I have immensely enjoyed using Conte Crayons and like I said before will be buying more than just the four colours I have, but overall I don’t think I’ve done too badly for limited palette.

 Printworks, Exchange Square. This is the finished drawing, a few things need to be looked at again and the placement of the people I’m not too happy with. The rest of it I can sort out when I use pastel or whatever medium I end up doing it in. I might just leave it as it is if I don’t get much further with it today, I really need to get on with the finished image and I don’t think this is going to be one I will be using. At the end of the day I can come back to this image and work with it another time if I feel the need to do so, but I must fix the charcoal before it all smudges.