Just before doing the second fog picture, I completed this very different and much more difficult picture from our May trip to Venice. I took a lot of pictures of the canals and their reflections and envisioned doing a whole series of 12 x 16s.  I’ve done 2, that might be enough!  For this one, I made a very important compositional change: I removed the brown side of a church behind the roof in the upper right corner. This opened up the picture to the sky and also allowed the shape of the roof to be more prominent.  I used brown Pastelbord and began with a light charcoal drawing, then hard pastels. I did everything with hard pastel, layering and redrawing as I went. I used local color, as much as possible, but generally brighter or darker, given the colors available in the hard sticks. (I have at least four brands: NuPastel, Faber-Castell, Caran d’Ache, and Richeson.)  The second layer consisted of all Giraults for the buildings and boats, and soft pastels for the sky and water reflections. The picture was taken on an early morning walk, with light dappling the warm brick walls. Venice IS a gorgeous city!  I purposely didn’t take pictures of the gondolas, favoring the small boats owned by the home owners.

This painting was somewhat tedious–particularly compared to my fog paintings. But I do love painting buildings and I had fun with the composition on this one.

Morning Light, Venetian Canal, 16″ x 12″, Pastelbord (brown)