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?