As I noted in another recent ‘art’ post (Home Park, Plymouth Argyle), it seems to have become a ‘thing’ that I create handmade cards for birthdays and special occasions associated with family and friends. For these cards, I generally paint a small watercolour picture of a scene that has a special connection to the person or event being celebrated or one that just shows a place that they really like. I usually use some small (roughly 10cm x 15cm) rough-edged raggy paper, for the painting and then I tape this to a simple brown card. This gives an interesting and attractive, rather rustic, feel to the cards which I think is appropriate given their handmade nature.
I painted the picture above, of Ronda in southern Spain, at the start of last month to use on a birthday card for my elder daughter’s husband. They travelled to Ronda to attend the wedding of one of my her workmates just a month or two before their own wedding last June and he liked it so much that my daughter was quick to suggest it as the subject for his card. To be completely honest, the other alternative was for me to try to paint a picture of Stamford Bridge, home to Chelsea F.C. (his team sadly) and apart from me not wanting to have to paint a scene that had lots of people in it, it was quite difficult to find a suitable picture to base a painting on. So, Ronda it was…
Funnily enough, despite being an incredibly scenic and much photographed location, with its deep gorge and steep cliff faces, Ronda was also a difficult subject to find a suitable picture to recreate as a painting. Most of the photographs of the town that I could find online were either taken from a distant vantage point designed to show the full majesty of the cliff-top location (which then made all of the interesting details of the buildings etc. shrink to an unworkable size) or were focused on a single ornate building or just the bridge that spans the gorge (and so did not really capture anything about the setting). In the end I opted for this shot of the bridge with a decent chunk of the cliff faces visible and some suitably Spanish-looking buildings. I tried to capture some of the drama in the scene as the setting sun creates its own lightshow between the pillars of the bridge. The picture/card was certainly appreciated, so I can’t have done too bad of job!
Tim O'Hare 