Home in Tockwith

I will often ask the people that I meet if they would like to commission a picture of their present home as a sort of memento. Very often, this is an attractive proposition especially in homes that has been in the family for some time in which children have been raised in and all the memories that go along with family life.

When I met Andy Bolton and his wife, Viv, in Tockwith recently, they not only wanted a painting of their current house, which they had moved into within the last year but they also enquired if there was a way that all of their five previous homes could be captured in some way.

My suggestion was to produce a single piece of artwork made up of all five properties. It would need to be a reasonable size, about A3, to fit all the images. After sitting down together to go over the finer details, it was decided not to include one of the properties, an apartment, which didn’t particularly lend itself to the project. So we were left with four properties which fitted more comfortably together within the piece.

Fortunately Andy, had kept all of the sales particulars from each of his previous homes and I was able to scan the photographs from each document. I produced a mock up of the layout in photoshop to give an idea of the final presentation, which was agreed upon and then I was all set to get painting.

The painting of the present home in Tockwith was an A3 watercolour painted on to Bockingford 300gsm NOT paper. The photo I worked from was taken by myself on a bright morning with the sun illuminating the facade of the property, casting shadows which is always good for adding definition to the various details. A little artistic license was used to bring the ash trees on the left into leaf as it was still only February when I took the pictures. The previous properties were painted in the same medium. Starting by soaking the paper and adding the base colours which I allowed to bleed into one another to create those soft edges between each image. I love this effect that you can achieve in watercolour. Multiple washes of colour were added, getting darker as I went along until I arrived at the finished result.

Looking at the completed pieces, I’m delighted with how they look together. It really is an imaginative and effective way of capturing the various houses that have been lived in over a couples life time.

This is what Viv had to say about the process:

“Pete impressed us from the start with his professionalism, quiet charm, easy manner and obvious talent. We were so delighted by his early sketches of our home that we commissioned a second painting from him to feature the many houses we have lived in over 35 years.

Pete worked from photographs he took of our present house and from images we supplied of our previous homes, then emailed us his sketches for comments and approval. The whole process from first visit to finished product took just three weeks.

We now have two original works of art which not only look beautiful but evoke lovely memories. Thank you, Pete.”

What next? After spending a bit of time in Tockwith I was able to take some more general photos of the village such as the village hall, the pub and the church and I’m hoping to capture the essence of the village through a series of sketches. Watch this space!