Roof tiles

[Tom Cunliffe]

Usually when I’m painting a roof of a house I can get quite a reasonable effect with a combination of dry -brush, varying colours on the paper and perhaps a bit of pen work.  However, I’m in the process of painting an old house in Bruges, Belgium which has very interesting tiles which I would like to bring out properly, yet without overworking.  Here is a small section of the roof:

It seems overkill to outline each tile but I would like to indicate that the tiles are more than the usual straight rows.

Any ideas anyone please?

Thanks in anticipation,  Tom

[Julia Proulx]

You could treat them like many people treat brick buildings. Just do a few small sections in detail. They look awesome! I hope you share your trials as well as what you settle on.

 

[Sandra Strait]

I have to admit that I’ve never tried something like this, and I’m not sure what I would do, but a trick I have when I’m not sure is to run the photo through Photoshop filters.  It simplifies the detail in different ways and sometimes helps me decide which details I want to keep or emphasize.

 

I did this with your photo.  Not sure if it will help you, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt.

[Tom Cunliffe]

Thanks for that Sandra – the first one is particularly useful.  I’ve also looked in one of my favourite books – by Wil Freeborn (How to Paint Watercolour with 50 small paintings) and he tends to draw the tile outlines in pencil – which makes a much less prominent than a pen.  I think I’m going to do something like your first filter but in pencil and see how that turns out.  I’ll post the result here when I’ve finished it – hopefully in a couple of days.

 

 

[Tom Cunliffe]

Thanks Julia – I think something along those lines

[Sandra Strait]

I look forward to seeing what you come up with!  I’ll have to look up that book too.

[Tom Cunliffe]

Well, I didn’t make too good a job of it.  I used a sepia pen but should have made more variety in the lines.  Never mind, here it is. Onwards and upwards as they say . . .

Its a house in Bruges, Belgium, with a man in traditional Flemish dress

[Sandra Strait]

How charming! I think the detail in the roof is proportionate for the painting as a whole. If you had put much more emphasis on it, it would have messed up the sense of distance.

[Anonymous]

It’s fine Tom. If you really want to tweak you could add a few splodges of a darker tone of brown to the tile colour. But it really is fine as is.

 

[Tom Cunliffe]

Thanks Sandra.  I think I’ll leave it as it is now.

[Tom Cunliffe]

Thanks very much Rod!

[Julia Proulx]

I thought you did a very good job of it! Nice work and cute subject!