Tag: london

London Landmarks #art

London Landmarks Watercolour Series

For my eighth series of miniature watercolour paintings, completed last September, I decided that it was time to tackle some of the well-known landmarks in the U.K.’s capital city London. I have to admit that my own visits to London are relatively few in number, with most of the recent ones revolving around trips to watch Plymouth Argyle playing at Wembley (twice, both times depressingly unsuccessful), and against Arsenal, Chelsea and Brentford in the FA Cup. However, like pretty much everyone else, I’m very familiar with many of the obvious historical and touristic landmarks… but when I paint a series of miniature watercolours, I like to throw in a few less obvious subjects, and in the case of this set, that led to me choosing Hampton Court Palace, Battersea Power Station, the Royal Albert Hall, and the Globe Theatre.

The full list of the pictures (working left to right and top to bottom in the grid of pictures shown above) is:

  • the Big Ben clock tower
  • London Bridge
  • Buckingham Palace
  • Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square
  • the London Eye
  • the Tower of London
  • the Globe Theatre
  • St Paul’s Cathedral
  • Hampton Court Palace
  • Battersea Power Station
  • the Royal Albert Hall
  • Westminster Abbey

As with all of my other miniature watercolour series (Dartmoor Scenes, Capital City Landmarks, Cornwall Landmarks, Exmoor Views, Plymouth Miniatures, House Plants, Trees), I have listed composite prints and greetings cards of these pictures on Etsy and have sold quite a few of the greetings cards since doing so. Interestingly, as with some of my other series, I am finding that it is the cards featuring more unusual subjects that tend to be the ones that sell. I found this a bit puzzling at first, but on reflection it makes sense because with the more obvious subjects, buyers have lots of choice and the platform algorithm is much less likely to show them my picture in response to their search.

If I was going to pick out a favourite from this series I think I might go for Hampton Court Palace. I think I have picked out enough of the detail in the building and also managed to give it a bit of depth with the shadow under the archway. I think the people in the foreground also help to add interest.

Hampton Court Palace

Capital City Landmarks #art

Back in March, I was in a great rhythm with my art, painting a miniature watercolour picture first thing in the morning on most days. Without really thinking about it I found that I slipped into a routine of painting a small (5cm x 5cm) picture on some chosen theme. Each one took me about 30 minutes to do – it was a kind of morning meditation! My first theme was of Dartmoor Scenes and this was followed by a series of House Plant pictures, but for my third set of these pictures I decided to go further afield, and chose Capital City Landmarks.

The first couple of pictures I produced were easy choices – Big Ben in London and The Eiffel Tower in Paris, but then I found myself having to scratch around a bit, wondering where to head next, as I realised that many of the most recognisable landmarks that popped into my head were not located in capital cities. Any sane person would surely have just accepted that fact and switched the theme to City Landmarks, but if you think that’s the kind of thing that I would allow myself to do then you would be sorely mistaken…

In the end, I did manage to find enough subjects to complete a series of twelve pictures and the results are shown in the composite image at the top of this post. It ended up that half of my landmarks were in Europe (London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Amsterdam and Athens) and the other half where further afield (Washington D.C., Toronto, Mexico City, Tokyo, Cairo and Beijing).

I’m really please with this set of pictures and plan to produce some greetings cards with them.

Do you have a favourite?
Are there any other (not necessarily capital) city landmarks that you’d like to see me turn my hand to?