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I painted this from an old photograph of the Houses of Parliament taken from Westminster Bridge. I love painting London and this is one of the city’s – in fact the world’s - most iconic landmarks. It makes a brilliant subject for an artist. When I was working on my BBC TV series about learning from the masters, I actually painted the Parliament buildings from the Thames itself on a tethered ‘London Duck’, when I was emulating the style of Monet. It was a bit easier working from a photograph, as that didn’t change position with every random wave. This painting is impressionistic, which simply means one is painting an impression of what one sees, and is not accurately drawing every detail first and later trying to create the perfection of a photograph.
In this foggy scene I worked from the left to right changing the colour as I went from the yellowish hue to the darker pinkish brown, trying to keep the brush strokes bold and visible, to avoid having it all looking too bland. Laying in the shape of the misty buildings came next, using a slightly darker reddish brown over-painted further to the right with a purplish-blue, using vertical brush strokes to enhance the effect of the tall buildings. These brush strokes are random, but you’d swear that sometimes you can see windows and various architectural shapes in them. To paint impressionistically, I would usually have everything furthest away from me looking quite blurred, and then progressing to getting the details up closer looking a bit sharper, until the lamp posts, the Rolls Royce and the filigree metal railings on the left , are as crystal clear and as detailed as I can paint them.
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