Mixed media views of Venice

 

 

Painting equipment

For this trip I decided to paint in mixed media, using watercolour and soft pastel. I felt the transparency and fluidity of watercolour would be ideal for capturing the light and water, while the opacity and vibrancy of pastel would prove perfect for painting the texture on the façades. I find that when combined they influence and help each other — a sort of kinship between the two media. For working on location I prefer to stand at an easel, so I packed my Herring versatile easel (see left), which is extremely light and folds flat into a suitcase. I also took a zip-carrying folder and stool. The carrying folder also makes a useful table for materials when placed on the stool.

 

I also have a shoulder bag for carrying my sketching and painting materials. This I hang from my easel with a hook, which has the added advantage of helping to stabilise the easel in windy conditions. I had to limit my pastels to a small box of carefully selected colours and in addition to my watercolours I also took along some tubes of Winsor & Newton Designers Gouache. These colours were Naples yellow, flesh tint, warm and cool grey and permanent white.

After an initial day of exploration, I first decided to paint the scene just yards from my apartment; Rio Dei Frari (above).

 

 

Sketches on location

For sketching I used a combination of felt-tip pen, ballpoint and solid graphite pencil in an A4 spiral-bound hardback sketchbook. In the sketch Gondolas, Rio de San Barnaba (above), I combined felt-tip pen with pencil and this sketch was used as a reference, along with a photograph, for the oil painting Late Afternoon Light, Rio de San Barnaba (below), which was produced in the studio. I worked on an MDF board primed with gesso and texture paste and sketched out the composition with a permanent felt-tip marker pen and then lightly stained the board using a mix of raw sienna and cadmium orange. This was painted in the studio. I like to paint oils quite thinly, particularly making use of the random textured ground, and this can be clearly seen here in the water.

 

Gondola boatyards

Boats as well as boat sheds have always fascinated me, so when I came upon the gondola boatyards at Squero San Trovaso, I was excited at the prospect of tackling this as a subject. It is one of the few surviving boatyards in Venice and is also the oldest and most picturesque. Within the boatsheds new wood is seasoned, while craftsmen build new gondolas and repair some of the 400 craft currently in use.

These are normally out of bounds to tourists, but I was allowed a quick sketch and was able to take a few photographs of the interior.

The drawing Gondola Repair Yard (below), shows the gondolas on the quayside from inside one of the boatsheds. Here they are given scraping and tarring treatment, where seven layers of black lacquer are applied to give the gondola its famous gloss finish.

 

For the oil Gondola Boat Shed, Squero di San Trovaso (below) I roughly blocked in the composition and tonal foundation using a 'turpsy' wash of ultramarine and burnt sienna. The highlights were then lifted out with a clean rag. The textural effects were achieved by painting turpentine directly onto the board and letting it run down into the wet paint.

 

To discover its many facets and develop my own personal vision will mean many more visits to Venice. In the meantime I must rely on memory, sketches and photographs to inspire me, with the strains of Vivaldi's majestic music filling my studio and transporting back to this beguiling city.

 

This extract is from an article in The Artist, July 2007 issue