Fresh Paint
ABOVE Helen
Sinfield, London
Buses in the Rain,
acrylic on canvas,
50x50cmHelen Sinfield
When Portfolio Plus member Helen Sinfield was out driving
one rainy day, she was struck by the effect raindrops had
while dripping down her car window. Not only was she
drawn to the reflections, but the way the scene beyond
was blurred. In that moment, the inspiration for London
Buses in the Rain was born.
Five years ago, Helen began dedicating more time to
painting after a 25-year career as a graphic designer –
experience that has a major part to play in the planning
and composition stages of her practice today. “In a lot
of ways, I still work as a graphic designer,” she explains.
“I put the images in Photoshop, play around with the layout,
then decide what I’m going to paint.”
These were the steps Helen followed when creating
London Buses in the Rain. She used the photo-editing
software to distort and manipulate an image of the busesbefore overlaying it with photographs she’d taken of rain
running down a window. “Once I got the look I wanted,
I put a rough pencil drawing down onto the canvas, and
then did a fairly quick covering using a large flat brush
and Daler-Rowney System 3 acrylics,” she says.
As it was important for the Portfolio Plus member to
capture the “movement and colour” of the scene, she tried
to avoid getting caught up in specifics in the early stages.
“If you get bogged down in too much detail and overwork
it, the painting loses that movement.”
After gradually building up the painting, Helen finished
by finessing the raindrops using a small round brush.
Her secret to making them look realistic was to consider
them as abstract shapes. “I didn’t look at it as though
I was painting a raindrop now,” she says, “I just copied
the shapes and colours, and it all came together.”
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