This new Winter painting is a personal piece. It’s inspired by the bustling central London marketplace, a beacon for many visitors to the city including theatregoers and festive shoppers. It’s a meeting place for so many people and the site of thousands of individual stories. As a family it holds special little memories for us too. We have often walked around the Covent Garden Christmas Tree with our kids; a Birthday tradition for our eldest before and/or after seeing a show. You can see their eyes wide trying to take in all the passing people, the twinkling decorations and the golden light of the shop interiors. My Covent Garden inspired illustration also tries to take in the maximum detail… pulling together some of the surrounding architectural elements, into a close hug of a composition surrounding that feature Christmas tree. And of course it wouldn’t feel quite as festive without an artistic sprinkling of snow.
The image above has been cleaned up in Adobe Fresco, adding some snow highlights. I’ve found the digital scan tends to add more transparency to the lighter colours, which isn’t present looking at the real canvas surface. But this scan allows me to use the illustration for my card designs etc. So the extra time needed in adapting it is worth the effort. Below are photos of the unedited canvas, with all my squiggly ‘mistakes’. I’ve always felt that it’s these mistakes that actually make a creative style distinctive.
‘Covent Garden Christmas Tree’ (2024) acrylic and ink on 30 x 30cm canvas. Presented in a black floater frame.
No time-lapse this time. Annoyingly my phone died while recording… the cord was attached but the plug not switched on, argh! So I missed a big chunk in the middle of this. But below I’ve included a short video ‘walkaround’ of the painting details. As with my recent St Paul’s illustration, this canvas has been mounted in a studio crafted floater frame.
Although I’ve worked a lot at this size before (especially for my ongoing #smallseasons series) I recently discovered my materials supplier no longer provides the floater frames to match. So in the past few weeks I’ve had to remind myself of the woodworking skills required to build my own. Something I was taught many moons ago at art school. It has been a rusty start! But feels extremely satisfying to be building the frames I need. It also means I can be flexible and experiment with different aspects. I do love the square format… but I now have grand thoughts of panoramas and even verticals. It could well be another in a long list of unrealised plans and unexplored ideas. Yet there is always a ‘Fine Art’ part of my brain that wants to experiment. It was a creative whim that lead to my papercut dioramas that continue to keep me busy. Who knows if these latest ones will lead to new avenues.
As always, please feel free to get in touch: https://linktr.ee/illustrationbyjonathan I love to hear your suggestions for places to paint next.
