Writing in Greenwich Park

Technically this painting isn't finished because it's a very large piece and I ran out of energy to complete such a large work - but I learned a lot from the journey of creating it.

Story

My friend kindly agreed to pose for this painting. He writes full time and writes in a unique way with a lot of care given to the choice of words and how they convey meaning and also their lyrical rhythm across the piece. Trying to capture this process where he's selecting the right words to use is the subject for this painting.

The plan was to include the text of one of his works on the sheets of paper in the foreground, but I never quite reached the stage where it was ready to incorporate this detail.

Technical

Since I feel that this piece isn't finished there's many areas where I'd like to improve things. One area is the skin tones where I wasn't confident with how to achieve the colours, so this is an area that could be improved now that I have more experience with it.

The tree in the foreground also isn't to the level I would have liked, as I was struggling with the size of it. Whereas the tree on the right was something I was very proud of, as I really like how the softness of the intricate shadows comes through.

The blanket was also a challenge. I wanted to try to emulate some of the old masters with how they capture the form of flowing fabrics. However, with hindsight I should've left this out to simplify what needed to be done as it was very time consuming to try to capture the overall form plus the pattern.

I was happy with the choice of including Canary Wharf in the far background as this helps to set the piece in modern times. While the overall setting created a nice calm feel to the painting which was nice to achieve in such a busy city as London.

I love large paintings which was a big reason why I went for such an ambitious, large canvas. However, with hindsight this was too early in my art journey to do as I hadn't learned how to manage my time on a canvas yet and this created a situation where I couldn't see a realistic end date for the painting and I was forced to stop before I was truly satisfied with the overall result. I was trying to achieve too many details too early and to render too many things to a high standard that the net result was a painting that was going to take forever at my skill level. Despite this, I learned a lot on this work and I'm proud of what was achieved with it.