La Spiaggia, Positano (Positano Beach) 

(Gouache on Amalfi paper, 45cm x 45cm)

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 entitlng 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!

Stage 3: Now the painting is getting very complicated. The distant parts of the beach are very indistinct in the photos I'm using so most of the people are my own invention. The perspective isn't easy and this won't be a very "realistic" picture. But I hope it will have the colour and atmosphere of an Italian beach. Still a long way to go, though.

Stage 4: Here is the last picture of this composition before I finish it today. 

Stage 5: I've been photographing the picture in electric light, at the end of each session of work, and the colours look very yellow as a result. For interest, here is a version that I photographed today in daylight, though still with a flash. The truth about the colour is somewhere in between the two versions. The flash tends to flatten nuances of colour, too. especially in the day-lit version I have to paint the detail on the rocks behind the town, the sky, the last section of the town and the far left part of the beach in the fore-and middle-ground. I may add a few more people, too.

Here is the finished painting. I photographed it using a flash but no yellow light. There is a possiblity that I shall work into the rocks and the far left hand side a little more, but for tonight I'm done!

La Spiaggia, Positano (Positano Beach) finished
(Gouache on Amalfi paper, 45cm x 45cm)

​Here is the finished finished painting. I've reworked the left hand side of the beach a little.)

Positano from La Sponda (2007)

Gouache on paper

This is "Positano from La Sponda" at an early stage, in designer's gouache on A2 heavy watercolour paper. The intention is to achieve the jewel-like effect of a mediaeval or Indian painting, and so effects of light and shade ar subordinated to shapes and colours. It was begun two days ago and will take at least two more full days to complete.

Here's the last stage of "Positano from La Sponda" before I finish it this weekend. I'm not sure about the clouds - they need more shadow I think - and of course I keep seeing windows I've left out and adjusting the proportions especially in the foreground. There's sill quite a lot to do, even where the buildings look finished.And I still have the last few houses, the sea and the shore to paint. Maybe four more hours will do it.