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One New Painting


 Acrylic on canvas; A4 size; currently untitled.

I finished this painting yesterday. It forms part of my on-going Birkenhead Park series which I've been working on the for last seven years. This scanned image doesn't quite replicate the exact colour tones of the original, but it's enough to give a very clear idea of how it looks.

I've been experimenting with acrylic lately, using them initially almost as if they're watercolours by applying them in thin washes then building up layers of stronger colours. The painting is based on an original sketch done on location in the park. 

I'm interested by the pattens created by the natural shapes of trees, and the multiple colours of bark. Children tend to paint bark a solid brown, but if you actually look at it properly brown is scarce. Instead, there tends to be a huge range of silvers, greens, and other colours.

The flat edge of the water's far bank is created by the man-made pond's contour. Here, I was looking across the narrowest stretch of the pond. If you look lengthways along the pond, it's a very different shape again.


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Location: Birkenhead, UK

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