In May this year it will be 150 years since the birth of Frank Hornby, the inventor of Hornby Trains and Meccano.
To celebrate, there will be a weekend extravaganza in Maghull (near Liverpool) where he used to live, and I'm delighted to have been asked to paint a couple of pictures for the exhibition.
When I get an idea in my head I have to get cracking with it before I burst with anticipation. I don't own any Hornby trains and couldn't find any Hornby photographs that I could use without infringing copyright, so I decided to begin with this: a locomotive on the West Coast Wilderness Railway in Tasmania. I found the reference photo for this painting on a wonderful website called
Paint My Photo - where photographers and artists meet. This is a superb resource full of copyright-free photographs for artists to use as they wish.
In this blog post I'll show you the stages of producing my first painting for the exhibition.
I began by lightly sketching the outline of the train and track, and masked out the highlights on the train and the track. Next I added an initial light wash of green for the trees and blue for the sky. Whilst the trees were still wet I randomly sprinkled a little table salt and then pressed some cling film on top to give texture.
Next I added blues for the gravel and then sprinkled with salt.
Then I began to add colour for the train and carriage, lifting colour with a tissue to get a steamy effect around the bottom of the train.
When the paint under the cling film was dry, I removed both it and the salt and then repeated the process to strengthen areas of the trees and a bush in the foreground.
Whilst this was drying I began to more clearly define the train.
I continued to add colour and depth. It's very important to maintain a contrast between light and dark - this is what gives a painting that 3D effect.
At this stage I also began to add blues and purples to define the steam, remembering to leave a lot of white too! I used blue and purple instead of grey for interest.
Next I added definition to the areas that had been masked out, and added a touch of definition around the background - splashes of blues and greys in the gravel, grasses to the right hand side, and further definition in the steam using some negative painting and some dry brush strokes.
OK, I'm happy with the painting, now for the mount. I looked at various shades of blue, cream and white, and decided on a pale blue and a cream.
Blue helps the train to really stand out, but blue alone is too dominant.
So I added a cream, just leaving some blue to show through.
And finally, I chose a large natural wooden frame in light oak.
Finished.....or was it? Darling Husband spotted an error late last night - the lamp was not connected to the train! Here it is with the connecting piece added in.
The only thing left to decide is how much to charge for it...and to start work on my next piece!
Thanks so much for dropping by, I do hope you enjoy reading my blog. Why not leave a comment to say hello so that I know you called? Feel free to link back to your own blog too.
Stephie