Great Baddow

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Colin Steed - Artist and Tutor. I like the fact that you give a great deal of thought to the composition and colour before you start to paint. Keeping one car in and adding figures do make the street look lived in. Positioning the car in the distance would have improved the composition. The reason the road appears to be on a hill is because the eye line and vanashing point are higher than the heads of the figures and there is no land or trees in the far distance. The church spire is fine but the colour of the tower is too dark and intense. This gives the impression that the the church and the building in front are attached. Adding more blue to you mix would make the church look distant. Hope my comments have helped and you continue to plan your scenes before you paint. Well done Kate.

Here is Kate Bull's final painting which she sent in, along with her sketch, saying: 'As I progressed to the painting, I decided that the church spire should be behind the last house. I decreased the size of the chimney's on this house, in the final painting, so they did not obscure the spire. I added ivy to help give some distance between the spire and house. I included the two telegraph poles, although the one on the right does not show in the photo, but omitted the street light. I decided to put the white lines along the middle of the road, but most of these are lost by the shadow. I also decided to only include one vehicle, and tried to make it a little quaint. I was in two minds whether or not to paint a blue wash over the long brick wall to put it into shadow, as I liked the way the wall added to the perspective. I was originally going to add more muted colours to the shop window, to make it look as if there were lots of goods inside, but I decided this could also make the windows look to messy. I still think I might add a couple of muted yellows and reds. I finally decided to include the bus stop, along with three lads messing around while waiting for the bus to go up town for a night out, hence the summers evening sky. I painted the lads in quite muted colours, as they are in shadow. What I do like about the final painting is the way it looks as if you are on the edge of a village, and there is something else around the corner. I also like the way it looks like the road is on a hill, but that was not intentional. What I am still not certain about is whether the church spire has been treated correctly.