Duxford Watercolours

The best way to describe a painting is to not describe it at all, it is to evoke an emotion. However, for the sake of this section, I am going to do it. I will describe the emotion that led me to it, not the technicalities.

I was sitting inside a café, looking through the window. The sun was shining down on Duxford. There were churches in the background, some unassuming pedestrians were walking along the pavement, minding their own business, trying to quickly arrive at their destination. It was a good subject, it had the right light, shadows, background, foreground, middle values etc. I decided to make a quick thumbnail sketch of this view and took a picture with my phone for later reference in the studio. My mood was a mix of nostalgia and contemplation, I was still grieving the loss of my father. My pensive mood was reflected in the abrupt change of weather. Suddenly the sky became the right shade of Grey, the one that I always seem to create from the leftover colours on my palette. I saw great beauty in the gloominess of the atmosphere, it was dark, distant and unpredictable. The bankers on the street appeared to me like the twins from 'The Shining', wearing the same suits, even the same shade of blue shirts. The turquoise paint on the building in the background was glowing in the dark. I took the creative license to imagine a car there - wrongly parked, waiting to get a ticket. I imagined it in my favourite shade of blue, with one headlight missing. The sunlight was changing very quickly, forming some curious looking elongated shadows. I decided to paint plein air, capturing the atmospheric perspective. The finished painting looked nothing like the reference image I took, it was my impressionistic view of that moment.