For the month of May Vevie and the Virtual Paintout gang went to Italy!
Specifically Lido di Jesolo, a province of Venice. Yes, the place famous for all the canals and romantic gondolas.
(click on any pics to enlarge; I kept them small here so the page will load faster for you)
I must have been in a romantic mood for this one, and chose my title from an old Celtic hymn "The Water is Wide". The CD I have is by David Arkenstone called Celtic Hymns, and I like this version of the lyrics:
The water is wide, I can't cross o'er
And neither have I wings to fly
Give me a boat that can carry two
And we shall sail, my love and I
"And We Shall Sail, My Love and I"
From Google Street View in
Lido di Jesolo, Italy
9 x 12 acrylic on canvas
Here is the original Google Street View scene I chose to use:
As usual, I dinked around in Photoshop, trying out color schemes, etc. Settled on the one below for my mock-up. You'll see in the finished painting I made a change by leaving out the street lamps. They just made for too much clutter right in front of all that ships rigging. I like it better without them, but retained a bit of warm glow by keeping the last remnants of a sunset in the lower sky behind the ships.
I settled on a limited palette. I set the tubes out, then put the rest away. This time it consisted of:
Pthalo Turquoise (and a little Ultramarine Blue)
Cad Red Medium (and a little Permanent Alizarine)
Indian Yellow (currently my favorite yellow; so warm and glowing)
Dioxazine Purple
Titanium White
For my black, I mixed together: Thalo Green + Napthol Red Lt;
(Don't remember if I mentioned this, but I've been using Chroma Interactive acrylics for this series; will talk more about them next time; I'm really enjoying them).
So here we go, the "making of" photos:
I enjoy texture, so started by putting a layer of gesso on my canvas with a palette knife. When dry, sealed it with matte medium; that made it easier to draw the image and adjust the lines as needed, with vine charcoal. I tried the vine charcoal once before, and hated the smudgey mess! But discovered that sealing the dried gesso first with the matte medium made a huge difference in the mess factor. :-)
Underpainting colors; decided to add the Permanent Alizarine along with the Indian yellow and Dioxazine Purple:
Started the block of of basic colors and shapes:
Background done:
Alas and alack, I forgot to take more photos... so here we are, finished!
You can peek at the image wrapping around the canvas here:
Still wet on the easel, before a thinned coat of gloss medium, with the ref pic next to it:
A close up of the ships:
And can't forget Vevie or I'd never hear the end of it!
And the finished gloss coated large version of
"And We Shall Sail, My Love and I":
Hope you enjoyed visiting Italy with Vevie and me. Happy painting!
Retta
PS: Anyone interested in joining the Virtual Paintout excursions is welcome. Almost all mediums are acceptable; check HERE for all the info. It's fun!
