Haidee-Jo Summers’
Rooftops, Staithes, oil, 5×9in (12.5×23cm).
This is a situation where the suggestive approach works so well. The first and strongest shape I noticed was the shape made by the glare of the light on the water, both in the harbour and beyond. By squinting I could see that the buildings were massed together as a silhouetted shape against the light value of the water. Rather than think about individual shapes of buildings, I observed the outline made up by their rooftops. I blocked in a general dark colour to cover the whole of the village, which I judged to be an approximation of the warm dark colour I could see when I screwed up my eyes – purplish to brownish because of the mix of slate and terracotta rooftops. Then I only had to suggest some individual rooftops with smaller shapes and more specific colours, keeping everything within the darker band of values. I also felt that I needed to make a distinction between the white and the red buildings – in the detailed section you can see how much darker the value of the white buildings in the shade is compared to that describing the low morning sun on the water. The sun was rising rapidly as I painted, revealing more information and colour in the scene before me so I tried to keep a clear vision of what I saw when I first started the painting. I added a few highlights to pick out individual rooftops and details of chimneys. If I had attempted this painting in a linear way by first drawing outlines of all the buildings, it would have taken far too long and there’s no way I could have achieved this effect of the light, which is what I was after