Most of my commissions to date have been of private individual houses and it has been an intention of mine to focus on village scenes which would naturally appeal to a wider audience.
It was on Saturday 12th November I drove around some villages just north of my new home in Halifax. A village called Oxenhope stood out to me as ideal subject matter to paint. I’ve finally made time in my schedule and have completed these three paintings of the village from the original photographs that I took.
This painting was painted from a photograph taken from Dark Lane, just on the North side of the village. It’s a good view of the main part of the village and I particularly like the way that the sun reflects off a few of the buildings to create a sharp contrast between the light and shade. The original photograph that I took made it fairly difficult to distinguish between different buildings, so where possible, I’ve made the image a little clearer.
This painting was taken from the same spot as the first painting but looking in more of a westerly direction. The sun was in just the right position to catch the house in the foreground. As with the first painting, the contrast between the light and dark is outstanding and I particularly like the way the fence posts and wires stand out against the darker background. One of the common traps of watercolour painting, is to overcomplicate the subject matter - this would have been easy to do with this image especially with the amount of detail in the distance. For this reason, I have deliberately simplified the fields in the distance, I did not want this aspect of the painting to appear over cluttered.
The third painting was taken from the opposite side of the village on Hebden Bridge Road with the church in the foreground and the sun behind me. I’ve used a touch of artistic license here in removing the wind turbine that sits on the hill in the distance, which I felt detracted from the view. One of the features that really makes these images work so well for me is the autumnal tones in the trees. The sunlight brings out the golden brown tones in the trees beautifully and that makes these kind of paintings work so well at this time of year.
The original paintings are available to buy. £125 (mounted) or £150 (framed) each
A limited edition run of 50 prints of each painting are also available £30 (mounted) £55 (framed) each or buy all 3 for £75 mounted or £135 framed.
I can be contacted on my mobile 07792 553 273 or e mail pete@petechapple.co.uk
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view my web site www.petechapple.co.uk
