I don’t often do buildings. One of my earliest surviving pieces is a view of a Georgian terrace in Leicester, and I did have a passion for ruins in the ‘seventies. Since then I have rarely included buildings in a picture. Things have just taken a surprising turn. The piece on which I’m working at the moment (part of my series dealing with my response to the legacy of the First World War in Italy) features, centrally, a building. It is the ossuary/memorial chapel outside the village of Timau. (This is the one that will include references to ravens: see earlier posting.)
I was reasonably pleased with the way the composition was developing. The landscape context was going really rather well. Then I started on the building itself. I was able to retrieve from memory the basics of perspective, as taught in the grammar school I attended. Then it struck me. This building has 25 arches! There is a colonade running round three sides of it, a clerestory of three arched windows, and a bell tower with three more. Now if you have ever dabbled with perspective you will know that one of the most difficult things to get right is an arch in perspective. (Reflecting on this I came to the conclusion that even an eliptical opening in a curved surface would be easier, because you are forced to fly by the seat of your pants. With arches, however, you have to be scientific.)
The task was made more difficult because the positioning of the building on the canvas ensures that the vanishing points are outside the frame. I devised a neat trick to try to cope with this one. I laid the canvas on a much larger one, and projected the horizon line one to this. I was then able to locate my vanishing points, confirm that my initial guesswork had been wrong, and redraw the bits that were out of line. I knew there was something odd about it previously, but had not been able to identify the problem. Now all I have to do is draw the arches. Was this a good idea after all? If these blog entries begin to read like the ravings of a madman, you will not need to look far for an explanation. Wish me luck!