Doges Palace, Venice by Thea Cable

Beautiful detail and merging colours. I like the perspective that takes us to the domes and stronger colours. This would make a fantastic card you could sell in the Piazza San Marco !

i'm not surprised that you were apprehensive about adding colour! The detailed drawing is excellent and from looking at the finished painting the wait for inspiration was well worth it. You made the right colour choices and you were right to leave out the sky which would have detracted from the detailed palace. Good decision and well done!

Lovely watercolour of Venice Thea, the detail in those buildings is very intricately drawn and love your casual rendition of the Gondola's bobbing about, lovely washes in the buildings as well, Avril is right it would make a great card to sell to all those thousands of tourists mingling about! Just seen your lovely comments on my tuesday morning cat drawing and the who's looking at who? cat in pastels, thanks very much for taking a look at those and commenting much appreciated, i had just been been thinking it was about time for another of your excellent watercolours, and Venice is such a photogenic city it's a great one to paint!

Wow! I admire your patience Thea, beautiful painting and great details

Thank you very much Avril, Louise, Ros and Petra for taking the time to have a look and leave such nice comments - much appreciated. It is strange that, for someone who doesn't really like drawing, I have found I do enjoy doing penwork and especially when a very fiddly building is involved. How weird is that!

Great decision Thea works so well - I also love penwork although my first choice is a twig - the trouble with twigs is that they do blob a bit and it can take ages to dry. The painting I did as a demo and on which you so kindly commented was done in two stages. I did a twig drawing at the demo and since it was still wet I pulled out one I did the day before to which I then added the wash. Nevertheless the overall time was only about half an hour which forces you to be loose and you can't be tight using a twig anyway.

Goodness me, the detail in your drawing is staggering Thea! I envy your patience. How big is this work? You've used just the right amount of colour in my opinion - these things can easily become garish, whereas yours is refined and restrained. Of course, when you commit to this level of detail, you also commit to doing it all (it's not easy to fade and just hint at all those arches with pen and ink). But the liveliness and looseness of the drawing (nothing draughtsmanlike thank goodness) amply compensates for the repetition. Charming.

This has come out really well Thea, as has been said already, the pen work is excellent and a good decision to be restrained with the colour.

just amazing..well done..!

Amazing detail in this Thea, you have got it just right.

Intricate yet delicate almost like a Wedding Cake - well done indeed!!

I think you got the colour right - you've caught an ethereal quality in the light, and the (cerulean?) blue was well chosen.

Thank you so much Michael, Kim,Stephen, Rosalinda, Glennis, Debs and Robert for stopping by to leave a comment and what very nice comments they are - made my day I can tell you. Kim, the painting is 40cm x 30cm. I have moved up a size of paper recently and I am finding it works better for the paintings I want to produce. Robert, do you mean the colour of the water? If so, it is cobalt turquoise which is just that bit greener than cerulean I find. There are touches of cerulean in the buildings here and there of course. For my sins, I am fancying doing a pen and wash of the Royal Crescent in Bath - now that has detail with a capital D. Not sure if I am brave enough (or even skilled enough!).

Hi Thea, I see every thing is going great, love your work as normal, mainly because its opposite to mine, but with the same detail. Regarding the sky, I,m not sure if a light wash in your usual manner would have detracted from the detail on the building. Especially if the wash was laid in a way as to emphasise the building shape, pulling it out towards you. Say, a gradual line of clouds, starting from the left hand side and following a line similar to that of your boats. But to be honest I don't thick I would ever have thought about leaving out the clouds, not very imaginative am I. Painting a picture of the Royal Crescent in bath, go for it, I think you would do it great justice.

I am in awe Thea, the thought of drawing that building would terrify me but you have done it wonderfully well and your restrained use of colour enhances your drawing skills perfectly.

Thank you very much Peter and Val. Val, the drawing was a bit daunting but when I got into it and understood how the building was put together, it wasn't too bad. The worst bit was trying to decide on how much colour to add and I am glad you think I got it somewhere right. Peter, I am very ambivalent about skies in general and often leave them out. In this painting I did try a bit of sky on some scrap paper which I held in front of the sky area and I thought it complicated the composition and detracted from the building, so hence no sky in this one. I never paint a sky first as I find it backs you into a corner before you even get going with the painting proper and I always take the decision somewhere nearing the end of the painting process. However, all ideas offered are gratefully received and squirreled away for me to draw on at a later date, so thank you very much for adding your thoughts and ideas. With me, no advice is wasted!

Hi Thea, just seen your super comments on my wee scottie dog pastel portrait, much appreciated, it was fun to do a full bodied dog for a change, and mega thanks for your great comment on my pastel portrait The Duchess, of Kate Middleton, i had been out for a while and when i got back i was rather peeved to say the least that someone else had thrown their two penneth into the mix with a comment on the portrait being 'spooky', so great to see that you had jumped into add your lovely take on the work, you might want to go back and take a look at my response to Robert and Ann!

Hi Thea thanks so much for your lovely comment on my cat pastel portrait the kitten with blue eyes, thanks so much for taking a look and leaving your lovely comment xx