Good morning everyone. On Tuesday evening at our art society meeting we started a new project – painting houses for ‘our’ street. In fact, we are each taking a sheet of paper and painting or drawing a house or building. Then we will make a folding, concertina book of our street. Actually, we do a group project like this once or twice a year. And, it feels very good to be involved in something together. Especially a book which we can enjoy looking at and showing off afterwards.
Anyway, I chose this scene as my contribution – I’m guessing it’s in Edinburgh, Scotland (image from Unsplash). If you’ve got very good eyesight, the placard reads John Knox House. And now the original dwelling serves as a museum, no doubt telling the story of this religious leader in the 1500’s.
As you can see in this image, I applied the paint lightly and delicately in a watercolour technique, but it was actually gouache paint. Usually with gouache I layer it on thickly and use lots of white paint to achieve that gorgeous chalky look. Instead, I painted wet on wet and encouraged the paint to be more transparent. And here are some houses in gouache, using the thicker technique.
Painting Houses in Gouache
As I was looking at all the photos of my paintings, I realised I had actually painted loads of houses and other buildings. So, that gave me the idea to make a section for them in my gallery here – I let you know when it’s ready. Meanwhile, there are more houses here and here.