september 2017
During my visit to Tockwith earlier in the year, I took photographs of the prominent locations ready to produce some artwork. That process is now complete, and I have the finished paintings ready to display.
This is what Wikipedia says about the village:
Tockwith is a village and civil parish in the Harrogate district of North Yorkshire, England, near the town of Wetherby and the city of York. There has been a village on the site since at least 1086 when Tocvi was mentioned in the Domesday Book. Tockwith's greatest claim to fame is being used as a staging post by Oliver Cromwell prior to the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644. He made reference to Tockwith in his diaries, in which he said: "If heaven should be half as blessed as the fields of Tockwith, all those who should pass St. Peter's Gate shall be met with joys unequalled".
The three locations that I chose to paint were The Church of the Epiphany, The Spotted Ox pub and the Village Hall.
I have now made all of these paintings into prints and I will be producing a series of cards in the near future.
April 2017
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!