How did
you get on painting
La Rochelle
?
As I
said at the beginning of the month, I’ve painted it in Impressionistic Gouache
on Bockingford grey tinted paper – gouache is opaque watercolour and can be
applied using an oil painting technique, working from dark to light – see my
website www.robertnewcombeartist.com
on the Painting styles page.
‘The
Gate
Tower
,
La Rochelle
’
I’ll
use the 5C’s to analyse my interpretation of the subject.
CONCEPT
I
decided to focus on the architecturally striking buildings, with the gate tower
as the centre of interest. I usually paint my gouache paintings as vignettes, as
I have in this instance.
COMPOSITION
There
is weak sunshine coming from the left, but I strengthened the sunlight to light
up the face of the clock tower and the facade of the buildings on the right with
the buildings on the left in deep shadow. The group of trees on the left are a
nice feature and prevent the eye from wandering out of the picture.
The
gate tower is positioned on the one third grid lines on the right so it is in
the right place as the centre of interest and creates a satisfactory
composition. The architecture is quite complex but you will see I’ve
simplified it considerably. The grey paper has been left unpainted to represent
the colour of the buildings.
I
decided to leave out the power boats in foreground and instead put in a few
sailboats to provide some interest but not detract from the buildings.
I’ve
put in some reflections of the sailboats and the sunlit pillars of the gate
tower in white gouache.
CONTRAST
The
buildings in shadow on the left and the light on the clock tower pillars are a
good place for maximum contrast. I’ve used white gouache on the pillars which
contrasts nicely with the shadow side of the tower. The dark arch of the gate
tower is also a point of good contrast. A place of lesser contrast is the dark
shadow on the trees against the buildings in shadow.
COLOUR
The
buildings are a warm grey stone which I left as the grey paper with red pantiled
roofs and a grey leaded dome on the clock tower. There is also a long, low white
canopy to the left of the tower covering a street café – I decided to make a
feature of this by painting it with red and white stripes. The trees are a
summer green –
Windsor
blue and cadmium yellow with a little light red to reduce the garishness of the
green.
The sky
and water were painted in shades of cobalt blue and the edges of the washes run
into the grey paper in a vignette effect.
COMPLETION
Compositional
issues dominate this painting project – I think I’ve achieved a successful
composition coupled with the minimum amount of detail for the complex
architectural facades.
I’ve
decided to take a break from the Monthly Project for the summer but watch this
space in the autumn.
I’d
be pleased to hear comments from anyone who has been regularly tackling the
Monthly Project – was it a useful exercise and did you find the 5 C’s
analysis helpful?