Original Watercolours by Tim Wilmot

Gendarmerie office in St Tropez with many window shutters!

St Tropez, France, 22" x 15"

The local Gendarmerie building in central St Tropez with all its complicated window shutters!  I am still in the process of getting used to this old 'T H Saunders' watercolour paper, the forerunner to the Saunders Waterford brand.  It has quite a creamy colour - ideal if you're doing some Mediterranean scene because you have that yellow ochre undertone already.  This picture is dominated by some dark shadows.  It was fun playing around with the many colours you see in shade.

 

Place Lenine Saint-Junien, France

Saint-Junien, France, 15" x 11".

A central square (well more of a triangle) in a central town in France.  I put a fair bit of thought to how I could render the house walls to make them look more authentic.  In reality they are a bit shabby chic - here in deep shade, I added in different colours as I went downwards.  While the paint was still moist I still added in a bit more pigment of thicker consistency.  Then as the base of the buildings was still wet, I painted in the rest of the cars and their shadows.

 

Preliminary sketch for a painting of Chipping Sodbury High Street - Painting by numbers!

Sometimes I will do a preliminary sketch to work out my sequence of steps or areas which will be done together.  Here is one I did recently of my local town Chipping Sodbury, drawn on a scrap piece of paper...

Then when I have worked out also the darker areas and the lighter areas, I will start the painting...

Chipping Sodbury, England, 15" x 11"

It nearly always starts with the sky and ends with smaller details and figures.

 

Place Deffuas, St Junien, France

St Junien, France. 15" x 11".

The Place Deffuas in the town of St Junien central France.  Lots of dark shadows and bright sunlight in this one.  The left hand building worked well I think, painted very loosely with a medium mop brush and leaving the windows as bare white paper - helps having rough surface paper.  the foreground shadows went in last with the two left figures.  Composition is helped with the repeating patterns of the angular shadow lines.

 

Window Shutters St Tropez, France

St Tropez, France, 15" x 11"

So the challenge I set myself was how many windows and shutters I could paint in before I either got bored or gave up.  I think the danger with putting too much architectural detail in or making things look too tidy is that you verge on an illustration - not really what I aim for in watercolour.  My reference photo was taken on an overcast day so I invented some shadows coming down from the Gendarmerie building on the right.  Hopefully it works.

 

Trim Bridge Bath, looking up towards Queen Street

Bath, England, 15" x 11".

A view up Trim Bridge, through St Johns Gate and Queen Street beyond in Bath.  The familiar stone work colour here is done mainly with yellow ochre and cobalt blue to darken it up.  Also, as the paint was drying, I still add in a bot more colour so as not to make it too uniform.  The very dark areas were done with a bit of neutral tint with ultramarine blue.  All four figures were carefully painted around and they were the last stage - with the two left figures allowing their legs to blend in with the still damp foreground shadows.

 

Quai Mistral Frederic, St Tropez

St Tropez, France, 15" x 11".

A street just up from the quayside, Quai Mistral Frederic, in St Tropez.  It was a cloudy overcast day so I made up the shadows (apologies to any local people if they see this and maybe the light is in the incorrect place).  I think the contrast of the terracotta building and the cool shadows in the foreground worked well, and the figures plus bollards joining the foreground with the background.

 

Shoppers in Fore Street Exeter, Devon

Exeter, England, 22" x 15".

Fore Street in Exeter, a busy crossroads in the main shopping area of this city in Devon UK.  What attracted me to the scene were mainly two things - the angle of the light coming left to right (allowing me to introduce various figures of different sizes, and that lovely red building (this is Paternoster House, a Victorian house with a very ornate facade and a little white turret at the top) contrasting against the coolness of a winter sky and butted up against the yellow of the next door shop.

 

Port Street Cherbourg France

Cherbourg, France, 15" x 11".

Just off the port perimeter, Port Street looking towards a Brasserie and Cafes.  I think with figures in a painting, for me the easiest thing is to have them walking towards me or walking away.  To have too many walking towards you could look like something out of a Michael Jackson's Thriller Video, so I have to make a conscious effort to now and again have a figure sideways on.  I 'make up' all my figures, and practice frequently with pencil sketches drawing them all all different angles.

 

Funchal Madeira - An exercise in negative painting and perspective

Funchal, Madiera, 15" x 11".

For me, a serious bit of negative painting (painting around light areas with dark paint) and perspective.  On this mountainous island, here's a road going uphill, and taller buildings with their vanishing point disappearing into the distance.  The trickiest part of the painting was going around the white van and getting the shadows right.  Not sure if I needed that guy in the foreground - I drew in the outline of the foreground shadow and I think it needed something to connect it into the rest of the composition.