Cerveceria - San Isidro

This is a bar just opposite where the market takes
place on a Wednesday morning in San Isidro. I dare say that the bar itself is nothing special in architectural terms, but I liked it, and thought it was worth trying to paint it.

What I wanted to try to do was look at the different effects caused by sun on the light painted buildings.

I'm quite pleased with the bar under the awning, where the shade is a nice contrast to all the light above it.

En Plein Air

Most of the time I've made paintings so far they have been based on either one photograph, or several different photographs of the same thing. I've been
in Spain since Tuesday evening, and so I decided to try some on the spot painting, which I think is called doing it en plein air - which is French for - well, I'm sure that you can work it out.

This is the old station in the village of San Isidro, outside Alicante. Except it really isn't. Not all of it anyway. This is just a wall and a canopy from it, whish were re-erected about a mile away from the new station, on a quite street which had a blank wall. This is now a lovely public space, where they often hold concerts.

Finished Portrait

Here's the finished portrait of my granddaughter Amelia. I sketched in her right arm which wasn't part of the original photograph which you can see in the previous post. I did think about leaving the background as bare white canvas, but what I did was to use the photograph I took of the painting yesterday, then photoshopped it, changing the background colour. I tried out different shades of blue and green, and darker shades as well, but this creamy yellow base colour was the best.

I'm much happier with it than with any other portrait I've ever tried, mind you, that's hardly saying a great deal since I have only tried one full face portrait in acrylic previously, which I gave up as a bad job not long after starting.

Portrait: Amelia

Last year I painted a couple of pictures of my grandson Ollie - both of which are in my gallery. My daughter, Ollie's mum, asked for the one of me and Ollie before I'd even finished it, and my mother in law asked for the one of Ollie on his own.

That was last summer. I'm going out to Alicante to visit my
Mother in Law next week, and she has made it quite clear she expects a painting of my granddaughter Amelia this time. So on Sunday I picked out the photograph on the right, than sketched out a canvas: - you can see the sketch on the left.
It's a photograph rather than a scan but you can just about see what's what.

The two painting of Ollie last year were rather cheats, because on one he was pretty small, while on the other you could only really see the top of his head and not his facial features at all.

The idea, though, is to stretch myself. I've been painting in acrylics for about a year now, and it's time to really take on a proper portrait.

So I took the sketch along to the Artists' group tonight, and basically just got on with it. SO this is how it stands after two hours' work: -

I could pretend that I'm not very happy with this painting, but it would be an utter lie. Fact is that I'm really pleased.What I will say, though, is that as much as it looks like Amelia, and it pretty much does, it also weirdly looks like her Mum did at the same age.

I have to make a decision, probably tomorrow, as to whether I want to put in a background or not. If I do put in  a background it should probably be of just one colour, maybe a light blue to contrast with the pink dress,

A Couple of Boats

Yes, continuing With the boat theme from the Venice painting I decided to try something a little closer to home, with these couple of what I'd guess are fishing boats.

The water wasn't so much of a challenge as the Venice picture was , and I really rather like the contrast between the cloudy sky, then the rather smooth surface of the water, then the contrasting shadows and grass underneath the boats.