Reminiscent of the Notre Dame Cathedral painting, this painting captures the detailed architecture of the cathedral in downtown London Ontario. Mind you, the cathedral in London Ontario is not quite as spectacular as the little one in Paris, but it still stands out against the surrounding residential buildings. I had wanted to paint this scene for years but could never find the right angle. Finally one day I was walking around and found a parking lot that had a great site line to the cathedral and so I took a photo, and also did a small location painting to get the colours. This work is a composite of the photo and the location painting.Painting green is always tricky for the beginner painter, regardless of the medium. In this painting there are several examples of greens, the stairs in the foreground (viridian+french ultramarine+a spot of crimson red), the lawn in front of the house (winsor yellow+viridian+burnt sienna), the roof of the house (emerald green+rose madder genuine), the spires (emerald plus viridian, with some crimson red). Notice how each combination contains some warm colours to balance the green, this is important to achieve realistic greens. Another factor that makes the greens really sing is the overall colour scheme. Here, the reddish bricks of the cathedral provide a good complementary scheme. By the way, you may wonder why I left the ugly telephone wires in; for one thing, it helps fill the composition in the top right sky, but they also give a good sense of the environment....beautiful cathedral in an otherwise.... hansom? city.
11 x 15" hot press. watercolour, 2004
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