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Blythburgh Church. Suffolk
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Posted
Robert has summed up my initial thoughts, colour and tone.
But it’s the tonal values that concern me the most! You’ve gone someway to establishing your tones, and it’s a good start, but they could be much stronger and used to create aerial perspective, ie lighter in the distance, darker in the foreground. It all looks a bit flat!
The colours are all a touch on the dull side, this could be due in part to the paints you’ve used, which I believe are fast drying and have less oil in them compared to say more expensive artists quality oils. Robert and I have differing views here, but I like to use a touch of say linseed oil or similar during my final layers.
It also appears that you’ve used them very thinly on stretched canvas, nothing wrong with that approach, I tend to thicken up my layers as I proceed, remembering the important fat over lean rule of course!
It can help if you direct some strong highlights in a position that helps lead the eye to the main area of focus, obviously the building in this instance, but don’t dot them all over the place which would be distracting.
On a technical issue, the reflection of the church tower looks exceptionally long on the water, but you’ve got the photo to check that point!
Come back to us here on the forum if you need any clarification or help on any points, you’ve made a good attempt here at a tricky subject.
Edited
by Alan Bickley
Posted
Alan has given excellent advice. I would agree to check the reflections of the church in your photo. I would expect there to be a few ripple lines distorting the reflections to differentiate between the look of the building on land and in the water. Personally I would put some in even if you don’t see them in your photo, but not too many!
I like the way you’ve handled the greens, and generally it’s a pleasing composition and painting.
Posted
Just to clarify a small point - the difference between Alan's views and mine isn't about the oil: I always use Linseed. What I don't use is solvent, i.e. turps/white spirit or whatever (or Zinc White, but that's another matter). I've never used alkyds - there are other brands than Griffin (Winsor and Newton) but I don't know that they're under-pigmented: I shouldn't be surprised if they were, by comparison to artists' oils, but I remember Stephen Higton (which isn't to say I haven't got his name wrong) who used to show here and paints in alkyds - he seemed to get good results.