Portofino Paintings


Here are two recent paintings inspired by a trip to Portofino Italy, Portofino is famous these days as being the location for celebrity weddings, while that attracts a great deal of media attention, the true beauty of the port is its Mediterranean charm, colourful buildings, roof top gardens and vibrant windows decked with beautiful arrangements of flowers, the two pictures I painted are adjacent to each other in the harbour area.

I approached both with the same viewpoint of describing the feeling of what it was like to be there in the middle of summer, wanting to portray the exotic shadows in full midday sun and the colourful effect that has on light and shadow, I used a limited palette of just 4 colours (student quality Winsor and Newton) and Arches 300gms rough, a 5 B pencil, some scrap paper to rest my hand on as I sketch and my 2 number 12 rounds, one full round, one rigger.

I looked to simplify wherever possible so even when I’m describing the straight lines of the window in a disciplined way, I compensate by a loose rendition of the background and shadow, in both paintings I’m dropping in complimentary colours into the shadow area and mixing my colours in a very limited way so that I create a unified composition, I also try to approach the overall view of the painting as expressive, so I have a focal point  but other areas are not overstated, this way I get away with detail J
The colours I used for both are as follows

Cad Red
Cad Yellow
Cobalt Blue
Burnt Sienna

Hope you enjoy!     

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