Underground – David

Hounslow Underground Station

I decided to paint Hounslow underground station which is noted for its architectural design. This picture was the first in what has become know in the artworld as the Saturday Afternoon Triptych! (also see Development and Perspective)

Although a little intimidated by the crowds of people I took a vantage point across the road from the station using a rubbish bin as my easel. As I made my first tentative sketch, a grinning passer by sidled up to me to have a look. I haven’t started yet, I protested trying to hold my sketch pad away from him, but he was insistence on appraising two very vague pencil strokes – “very good was his assessment”.

With his compliments ringing in my ears I attacked my subject. I was determined to paint freely and tried to not worry whether I was being accurate. I could also see the usual rain clouds building and had 50 minutes on the parking meter. Within minutes the rising wind blew off my watercolour pan scattering my paints along the pavement, so the remainder of the painting was completed with grit and sand in the paints.

The feature element of the station was the sloping green copper roof which proved very difficult to capture. I would have liked to spend longer putting in more people as I was quite pleased with the ones I did. (See the guy on the right with the buff jacket and hands in his pockets? And the lady in the Indian clothing?) As my parking time evaporated, a jet rumbled over my subject and excited by the additional interest I tried to memorise the look of the plane and quickly dabbed it into my only free bit of sky.

Overall I was pleased that despite working fast without too much care it had some semblance of the subject. Frozen cold, I set off to find a subject for my second painting – Development.

Underground by Jane

Coal Mine

Underground by Sue middlesex

underground by Sue middlesex

Underground by Sue (Cumbria)

Piece of rock with a worm cast fossil

Here’s my latest offering. It’s a piece of rock with a worm cast fossil. It’s actually the imprint of a sandy shore, with wave cut ripples, and presumably the worm was some kind of lug worm, so I’m stretching the Underground theme a bit.

I wanted to add a live worm beside or on top of it, but I could only find really tiny, lively worms in the garden, that kept escaping from their pot. Where were all those huge sluggish worms I usually can’t help finding?
I used my watercolour pencils – there are only a few in the tin, so the colours are rather lurid.

Once again, I feel I’ve failed to get the tonal differences right. It’s not immediately clear that what I’ve painted is essentially a cube with differently shaded sides and top.