I totally fell in love with York the first time I went there in 2007 and get withdrawal if I don’t go back at least once a year. If you haven’t been to York, go there immediately, it’s awesome. I’ve tried several times (and failed) to capture everything this city means to me in some form of painting but have finally settled on an idea inspired by one of my favourite illustrators, Colin Thompson.
I trawled through the 50 million photos I’ve taken of York over the years to select the ones we felt encapsulated our favourite places and memories and put them into a composition based on the city wall.
Once I was happy with the sketch, I drew it out on A1 canvas board and started painting.
The nice thing about this project is having lots of little pictures to paint and I can work on whichever bits I feel like, rather than being committed to one main painting. At the moment I’m just blocking out the images in colour and it largely depends on the mood I’m in and how hot the weather is! Acrylics dry out quickly so I don’t put a lot of paint out in one go; the downside of that is I’ll need to keep mixing up colours as the paint runs out, or finding somewhere else on the canvas to use up excess paint if it’s not good to go back in the tube.
I’ll post regular updates as this progresses, so watch this space…