The Slug and Lettuce, Leicester.

You know, life is so much more convenient these days. Back in the 60's and 70's, if we were out and about and saw something interesting that would make a good photograph, chances are that we would not have our camera with us. Even if we had, it would likely to be a large bulky affair, with which you would need to know how to adjust the settings for available light, focus and make sure you made allowances for the viewfinder being offset to the lens and of course have some film in it etc. So unless you were very lucky, you wouldn't get the shot.


Nowadays of course, you can walk around with a camera in your pocket and not even notice it was there. It can even be integrated with your mobile phone - something else that was uncontemplatable back then. What's more, these newfangled digital cameras will work out the exposure, set the focus, recognise faces and work out out so many things automatically and we come to take them as granted, unless of course you are one of us more seasoned of photographers!


Although I visit Leicester everyday in the course of my work, it is only very rarely that I actually walk around the place at my leisure. So when I did just that a few weeks ago, having a camera on my mobile came in very handy for taking a few pictures, which would come in useful as subjects for a piece of artwork at a later date.


This painting is one such piece of work. Originally, I planed to do just a quick sketch, but it turned out to be just a little bit more complex and detailed than I expected. I opted to use watercolour and pen on an A3 bristol board sheet as with the 'New Walk' painting. The colours are a little bit washy but this is only meant to be a sketch and I didn't want to overwork it. At the end I did need to use a little white gauche for the slug and lettuce motifs, as it would have taken too long to work around the letters with the paint, and anyway the paint would be drying out too quickly before the wash was complete. OK, I could have masked the letters out with masking fluid if I had been a purist, but I can never do a neat job with that stuff. In any case, it is much simpler just to add those tiny touches of gauche at the end.


I am happy with this work. It is a little bit blueish due to it being a photo of the finished work, but the original is a clean white. I don't think I would have done anything differently - if you think different, let me know.
Thanks for reading.