The even number side of Wood Street is now complete, scanned and ready be turned into prints. I just have to decide on the scale for the prints. It’s either going to be half or three quarters the original size which equates to widths of 53 cm or 79 cm. I haven’t decided yet.
Having now completed the panoramic I had to decide how I was going to digitise it for placing on the website and for producing Giclée prints. Some artists prefer to photograph their work others prefer to scan. I haven’t had much success photographing my work. I find lighting difficult and get problems with shadows and reflections as well as parallax issues and blurring. Scanning art work is by no means straightforward, however since watching a Youtube video on how to do it properly, scanning is my preferred method of digitising. However, when you have a picture like this one that is over 1 metre in length, scanning does present challenges. In the end, I scanned it on an A4 scanner in six sections and stitched them together using Gimp. So I’m all ready now to get prints prepared.
Progressing with the painting. I’m working on a smaller scale than I have previously for a whole street panoramic because I’m not painting it in modules, scanning and reducing down. I’ve tried to maintain a good level of detail as that’s what I enjoy most about painting buildings. This has meant that I’ve had to be more disciplined with the brush work.
I have decided to do another Wood Street panoramic. This time however I’m doing the odd number side. I have decided to do it a bit differently to my last one in that rather than do a series of individual pictures which are scanned and then stitched together, I’m going to work on a single large of paper. This approach does present some challenges however. Single sheets of watercolour paper that are sold are not sufficiently wide enough so it has meant that I’ve had to cut a length from a roll. A task that sounds easier than it turned out to be. I then needed to stretch the sheet before painting which involved soaking it in the bath of water and taping it to a board and letting it dry. Stretching is required to reduce the amount of buckling in the paper when I do the wash for the background and to flatten the paper as it has come off a roll it has tendency to remain curved. So this is where I’m at now with the outlines of all the buildings in pen complete ready to start adding the paint.
