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Tuesday 28 October 2014

Beverley Minster in autumn colour. A3 Prints available.

Beverley Minster , watercolour sketch, 22 x15"

The Minster again, it saves traveling I suppose. Though seriously, I wanted to paint it again whilst the autumn colours still favoured us. The picture shows about 80 percent of the original as I have cropped a lot of sky and foreground. The small dark tower to the left of the Minster is St. Nicholas church situated to the east beyond the new Flemingate development. It will be interesting to see if it is obscured at all when the work at Flemingate is completed. Okay, anyway, guess this will be the last autumn view as I need to move on to other work. Or, perhaps another view of the Minster .... hmmmn maybe.  I am pleased with this effort and am looking forward to seeing it framed. A weird thing happened when I went back to add the essential colour. On arrival, trees their leaves and trunks were covered in a silvery FROST !!! Yet it was impossible, it was 18 degrees. Along Westwood Road, the avenue of sycamores and horse chesnuts had taken on an eerie, ghostlike appearance. Something from a film set. Looking over towards Newbiggin pits the vista was repeated, shrubs and trees had lost all their colour, an ethereal, other worldly experience. I stopped and examined a tree branch and discovered the answer. Everything had a dusting of white powder, very fine powder, as if a giant had sprinkled flour over everything. It must have been a blowout at the nearby chalk whiting works. Never seen it before, no doubt it will be reported in one of the local papers. For me though, I looked up and with great relief noticed the event had missed the area I was painting. Hey ho, never a dull moment.

 I still have a few for sale please go here to order, 

H A P P Y  P A I N T I N G
The pencil sketch done using an easel - the heavyweight paper being clipped to a board.
Detail 1

Detail 2

Detail 3


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Just lovely, John. I particularly like the emphasis on the Minster in this one, as well as the smaller church. The trees are more emphasized as well, with wonderful color variations. And, of course, your always interesting commentary. Thanks for putting the time in to do this work; I think it's and important part of the local history of your area and will be much appreciated someday (especially if you make a book out of it........:-))

John Geekie said...

Hello Susan, I am pleased to say that local heavy rain has removed much of the chalk dust from the trees. The picture has worked well and I am pleased with it. Had to stop traffic on a major road into Beverley today in order to allow a miscreant articulated wagon ( truck ) to reverse back towards the main road. George assisted as I was taking him for a walk!