Because the day was so hot, the only place I could paint was in the shade of the trees. This forced me to think a lot about how to get a composition out of this scene.
There was a lot of detail in this scene, and a scene like this can easily turn into ‘postcard’ like illustration if you are not careful. So I looked for something that would capture the feeling of the hot day, but at the same time make an interesting abstract design.
Photographic Reference for the painting
Scene with shadow pattern in the foreground.
Scene without shadow pattern in the foreground. At first I thought I could make something out of the shadow pattern, but it seemed that this would still be too complicated.
Then I decided to focus in on the buildings on the other side of the river, and ignore the water. I found a building with some washing hanging out, plus a green awning at the bottom. The colors of these man-made materials happened to create a very nice harmony with the ochres and siennas of the plaster on the buildings, and their lovely red-tiled roofs. It was a perfect red green complementary contrast. In addition, it had the principle of design called contrast of saturation—the roof tiles and orange washing were more saturated versions of the hue of the walls.
I used the idea of color pairs to create a color harmony in the painting. The most important color pair in this scene is the walls of the houses combined with the shadows cast on them. Light/shade pairs form a natural color harmony if you get them accurate, and so you should use them if you can. However you need to get the relationship of hue, value, and saturation all perfectly accurate for this color pair harmony to work, and it is a lot harder than it seems. (This is the reason by the way, why I include a lot of assignments on color pair harmonies in my Apprentice Program online painting classes)
Cat. No. 1251 Washing Day in Pontremoli, Tuscany
35.5cm x 27.5cm – Oil on Linen – 2019.
Here are some closeups of the impasto technique I used to create the washing. You can see that I added much more detailed and smaller brushstrokes in these two areas, which were my two focal areas. I simplified the other shapes in the painting in order to create a contrast of detail.
Thank You
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope you find it useful. If you would like to get free painting tips by email, please sign up for my free tips newsletter.
If you are interested in a structured approach for learning how to paint, take a look at my online painting classes.
Happy painting!
Barry John Raybould
Virtual Art Academy
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