Painting process | Home Time, Summer In St James's Park
The lively, beautiful parks are one of my favourite things about living in London. When the sun finally comes out, everyone pours into them to sunbake, socialise and celebrate. There’s a kind of collective relief in the air. As the shadows lengthen, the crowds slowly pack up, leaving stray deckchairs and a few stragglers scattered across the lawn.
I wanted this painting to capture that warm evening glow and the lingering happiness at the end of a summer picnic. It’s all about that feeling of worshipping the sun in London when it finally comes out.
You can watch the full time-lapse by clicking the image above.
Preliminary sketches and studies
I started by working out my composition and focal point. My references were busy with layers of deckchairs, crowds of people and a messy canopy of leaves. I edited them and organised them into a unified scene.
I noticed that the shadow from the tree in the mid-ground created a ring of light hitting the grass. I decided to play this up to pull the viewer’s eye into the background.
Next, I painted these little value studies to define the value relationships. The first sketch wasn’t dark enough, and once fixed in the second sketch the light effect started to emerge.
I then did this little colour study, trying to stick closely to the values in the black and white sketches.
To enhance the yellow light, I chose to push the colours in the shadows of the foreground tree towards purple, with blue reflections from the sky.
Finally, I did a much larger sketch to pull all my ideas together. I used this sketch as my reference for the first layers of the final painting.
The painting process
Again, I completely forgot to photograph the painting at the drawing stage (so you’ll have to watch the time-lapse video if you want to see it!). So, this is the first layer which is a simplified block-in. I used a really dark purple for the first layer of the tree.
I slowly built up the texture and colour variation in the tree canopy. I kept the overall shape and value unified, while allowing natural variation as the light filters through.
At this stage I had started adding the people and distant deckchairs to the scene, which starts to give it real depth as they recede into the distance. I kept them as a brief impression, rather than meticulously detailed, to mimic how you’d actually see them in real life.
I also noticed I had painted the foreground deckchair far too small, so I started to re-paint it correctly. This also helps to create the sense of perspective.
Finished!
"Home Time, Summer In St James's Park"
50x40cm, oil on linen
I loved playing with colour in this painting, creating that vibrant contrast between purples and yellows. It really came together in the final stages.
Details
It took me such a long time to get this deckchair right! And finally, I worked out I’d missed the green reflected light from the grass hitting the wood, and then it all came together. I enjoyed painting the intense light reflecting off the fabric and interrupting the stripes.
The last thing I did was use a dark purple to clean up the edges of the tree trunk. From a distance, the purple is subtle. But this adds to the vibrancy of the colouring in the painting.
In the leaves, I layered cool blues and purples where they reflect the sky, and warm yellows where the low sun filters through.
The wood on the deckchairs is the only place where I used warm red paint in my colour mixes. The red that I used in the rest of the painting was actually a cool pink.
The people and deckchairs are just suggested with quick brushstrokes. I wanted to keep them undetailed, as this is how you would perceive them from a distance across a bright lawn.
This painting will be part of my new collection, releasing on 7 May.
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