Portmeirion

This is one of the places that I will paint over and over again. I love colour, particularly pastel colours and the little village of Portmeirion in Wales has colours in spades!

Most people know Portmeirion as the place where the 1960s drama The Prisoner was set. It remains to this day one of my favourite programs and even while painting it I could visualise ‘Rover’ roaming round the grounds with menace. I might even put him in next time!

There is a lot I was pleased with about this painting. The perspective and colour of the buildings on the top row worked very well. It is hard to paint with block colour as opposed to brick as there isn’t much detail to capture and the overall effect can end up looking a bit childlike. But the shadow and the shape gave it the dimension I was aiming for.

I quite like the building in the foreground though I’m not completely sure I pulled off the perspective on this one. I think it works. I’d have liked to put some benches in the back of the building to give the illusionof more depth.

The right hand side of the painting didn’t work as well as my reference photo was very obscured and I had to make some of it up. The buildings are very flat and one dimensional and they let the painting down.

There’s a bit of confusion over light source and I’m not sure those tree shadows are facing the right way.

The flowers in the foreground I liked but I think they would benefit from some more highlights and shadowing on the actual flower heads to give them a more realistic feel.

Overall I liked this one as an introduction to my paintings of Portmeiron.