August is the month when I like to complete unfinished work or perk up drawings or paintings that I think are just missing something.

I’ve had four framed drawings of Lanark townscape packed away but during a recent sort I brought them back into my studio.

I really enjoyed putting these compositions together. I had only planned on doing the one at first, but there are so many interesting details in Lanark’s townscape that I ended up with four different layouts including New Lanark.

The thing that bothered me about these drawings was that they were locked into lockdown time when windows were decorated with rainbows in support of key workers. The images captured an expression of hope at that time but right now I want to look forwards.

All four images have been scanned at a high resolution and I have these on the record so I decided to take the paintings out of their own lockdown. I removed them from their frames and decided to free the rainbow colours from the windows and move the colour elsewhere on the drawings.

I’ve been looking at ways to take my street drawings in a new direction and I’ve really enjoyed searching out architectural elements and details and forming these compositions.

I wrote a post about this change in work here when I responded to the call for entries to enter a local art competition here in Lanark.

Back to the task in hand. Having taken the artwork out of the frames I began by lifting off the rainbows (gouache paint so water soluble) and reinstate the dark blue and build up contrasts.

Looking at each painting in turn, I gradually introduced a range of blues. The colour pops of reds, oranges and yellows brought the warm spectrum colours out into the streetscape.

I worked on these during our recent hot spell so I went for that sun-drenched, blue-skies and flaming chimneys look!

Here they are, back in their frames, refreshed and revitalised!

The artwork and cards are all available to buy and shown together here on my main website.

Thanks for reading,
Ronnie 🙂