Although I knew that replicating the colours on the photo would lessen the impact of the painting, I was drawn in to using a broader range of colour than I anticipated (no self control!). I wanted to hold on to some of the thumbnail sketches' simple composition, with angles of the roof and shadows that broke the blocky aspect of the barn.
This is where the main structural shape was at its boldest, although I couldn't help playing with the different shapes. I tried contrasting the foreground in different ways that changed the perceived distance to the barn, before ending up using it to reinforce the angular shapes in the composition.
I stopped when I felt I was tinkering with details and not prepared to make any serious changes in colour contrast.
I enjoyed the thumbnail sketches and envisage doing plenty more, but with oil paint and maybe one or two colours, which may give me the dynamism of a loose brushstroke together with the simplicity of a concise composition.
if you get the chance to do a few landscape/urban landscape sketches before we meet on the 17th of April it won't be time wasted. You can use any drawing or painting material that you have at hand. You can use photo references, like I did, or try your hand at doing it straight from nature (like we will also be doing on the course).
As you do them remember it's an exercise to come up with some interesting contrasting shapes and not a challenge to record the detail of what you are looking at!