Large gouache painting finished 2007: final
'Drinking Fountain, Sorrento' |
The waitresses at the Mona Lisa were very surprised by my activities with pen and watercolour but very patient and flatteringly interested in my drawing. The little paintings took me two mornings to complete, so I drank rather a lot of coffee and ate lots of the delicious petits fours that they served with it – not cheap mornings but very pleasant. When I went back, in the summer, the same waiters were there and I was able to continue exploring in watercolour and ink this extremely old (though now very commercialised) crossroads in the “Historic Centre” part of Sorrento.
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December 2007 — La Spiaggia, Positano
Stage 1 I thought I'd post my present work in progress though it's at a very early stage and it will certainly change a lot before it's finished. The people in the foreground will need some redrawing as I fill in the surrounding areas, I realise. Now that I see the photo of it on the screen I can appreciate the composition in a different way. My art dealer friend in Sorrento warned me firmly against including people in paintings but for this subject - Positano Beach - I don't see how I can avoid including bathers. Perhaps I should give the painting artistic respectability by entitling it "Bathers" following the example of Picasso, Cezanne and Renoir (to name but a few.) |
Stage 2
This is after another couple of hours during which I realised that I'd drawn the left hand side of the beach on a different scale and level from the right. This affected the lowest level of the town buildings too, of course. Moral: check that your drawing is accurate before you start to paint, unless you want to do a lot of time-consuming repainting! I am encouraged by my friends' comments to put in plenty of people on the beach, which I'll enjoy doing! |