Venice Gold

A few years ago, my husband and I strolled through Venice on the first stop of our 25th anniversary trip.  This scene caught my eye because of the way the water turned golden with the reflection of a brightly sunlit buildings along one of the city's many canals ...

I cropped the photo to draw the golden light closer,

and then created a simplified sketch on canvas.  I was careful to get the architecture and perspective correct at this point (much easier now than later!)

One of the fun things about painting is that there are many "correct" ways to start.  For this painting, I chose to begin with my darkest area, which is the shadowed water that leads to the foreground boat, and then use that dark value to "key" my other values.

I painted each area almost to completion before moving on to the next, but always while comparing values -- darks vs. lights.  The important thing in this painting was to capture the essence of a golden glow, which meant that subtle value changes really mattered.

My process continued in this manner until the canvas was covered and then I went back for a second pass to make color corrections and add nuances.

I really love the way the lines in this composition lead your eye from the foreground boat through the golden sunlight and then along the walkway back to the foreground.  This painting was part of my "Making Ripples" solo show and helped to raise funds for a Rotary clean water & sanitation project in the Dominican Republic that my husband and I will be volunteering on in January 2015.
Venice Gold, 20x16 oil, SOLD

Here's the original cropped photo again for comparison:

Two Views: Safe Harbor and Red Boat Reflections

Often, there are several different paintings that can come from one photograph.  This particular view of Vernazza, Italy, inspired two paintings for me, focusing on different aspects of the same scene.

In Safe Harbor, I cropped the original photograph to emphasize movement.  I liked the diagonal lines that start with the reflection near the bottom right and zigzag through the boats, up to the walkway on the top right, and across the plaza to the left.

My challenge with this composition was to gently bring the viewer's eye back to the foreground.  My solution was to emphasize the reflections of the buildings and umbrellas to vertically connect back to the boats.  Here is Safe Harbor, 20x20 Oil:

After the first painting, I decided I liked the reflections so much that I wanted to paint the scene again, but with the focus primarily on the boat reflections.  I chose a long, horizontal format and cropped the image for my 18x36 canvas like this:

Here's the result ...another point of view.  Red Boat Reflections, 18x36 Oil

Both of these paintings are currently available at The Little Art Gallery.