Burano, Italy, Watercolour 15" x 11"

Rio Terranova

Venice, Watercolour, 15" x 11"

Campo S Martin, Arsenale, Venice

Venice Market, Watercolour, 15" x 11"

Normally my first painting stage is to lay down a wash over most of the paper except key areas I want to leave unpainted or white.  This time I painted top to bottom without any initial wash.  Hmmm different end look and a few extra white bits.

Painted on Saunders Waterford, Cold Press, 300 gms.

#watercolour #StcMill #watercolorpainting

Livorno, Italy, 15" x 11"

The 'New Venice' area of Livorno in Italy, and a horseshoe-shaped wide canal running around the centre of the older part of Livorno.  Here a mixture of craft, and just up my street as a painting subject.  Mainly modern boats, not really commercial, but I like painting scenes like this - a background, boats and reflections middle ground and maybe something in the foreground - a jetty or similar.

 Painted on Saunders Waterford, Cold Press, 300 gms.

Lido, Venice, 15" x 11"

Cedars are one of my favourite trees (wish I had a Cedar of Lebanon) so I could not resist this attempt at the top of a blue cedar just popping over the roof tops at the Lido, Venice.  I suppose an ordinary street scene, but jazz it up with some light and shade and a couple of street signs, row of park cars.  Probably I prefer doing this sort of scene than the run of the mill gondolas and canals.

Painted on Saunders Waterford, Cold Press, 300 gms

Here's my latest Watercolour Demo up on my YouTube Channel, this time a scene in Venice (yes, another one!) and focusing on tips for simplifying the scene.

Venice, Italy, 15" x 11"

A study of a couple of builders filling a barge with building rubble, and a little bit of dust as a consequence.  So a an exercise in creating a figure with the wheelbarrow, just at the point of tipping his load over the edge and maybe his colleague offering some instructions.  A tricky scene to get the composition right and keeping everything else in the picture really simple.  The dust was the last thing to go in - a mixture of white paint and a little cobalt blue, painted in with little water - almost dry brush strokes.

Painted on Saunders Waterford, Cold Press, 300 gms

Venice, Italy, 15" x 11"

A second crack at this scene in Venice, on a smaller format - the last one I did was a plein air and half imperial size.  Here, we have light hitting all areas of the scene, directly and indirectly.  I tried to have some dark shadow going across the foreground, to give an opportunity to have some shapes being silhouetted against the light in the middle ground.  Also some figures on the bridge, darker against the light in the background.  The right hand side was tricky to convey in a loose style - many little details to get bogged down on.

Painted on Saunders Waterford, Cold Press Paper 300 gms

Venice, Italy, 15" x 11"

For some reason I went wild on the cobalt blue on the steps, trying to make it cool in relation to the warmer background.  But I think it works having the warm against the cool and very different tonal contrast as well.  So there were almost 3 stages to the painting - 1) First wash  2)  Shadows in background and foreground figures with bridge  3) Darker steps and darks around the bridge and lighter details of the background buildings.

Painted on Saunders Waterford, Cold Press 300 gms

Here then is my latest video up on my YouTube Channel, and mostly about getting figures into the landscape.  So for beginners - if you are painting a street scene, try and get at least one figure into the scene.  In this video I talk about my practice technique for figures.