Provence is full of quaint little villages where people go about their everyday lives walking the same stone paths which feet have trod for more than five hundred years.
During my Provence workshop with French Escapade last month, we had the pleasure of visiting one of these hillside towns for a morning of sketching. The workshop organizers asked all of us to keep mum as to the name of the village to protect the privacy of the residents and keep it from becoming a popular tourist destination.
It was a magical place, quiet and remote, like stepping back in time.
We really enjoyed the few hours we spent there. After wandering around for a little while, exploring the winding walkways and snapping photos of all the little things that caught our eyes, we settled in for a lesson and a demo, during which I painted this scene…
(The actual sketch has the name of the village lettered into the upper left corner. I Photoshopped it out so I can share the sketch here. I wouldn’t want to be the one who divulges the location of “Jackie’s Secret Village”!)
I began by painting the leaves on the vine that was climbing up the wall next to the window. I like to put the leaves in first, so I can apply the warm yellow-green paint to white paper. If I had painted the peachy wash over the wall first and then painted the leaves on top of it, the color of the leaves would have been impacted by the rusty-colored base wash.
I don’t enjoy the process of painting around all the small bits of leaves, but I don’t stress about it either, or try to do it perfectly. It gives me the results I want, so I think the investment of time is worthwhile.
It’s okay to leave some spots of white showing when painting around leaves like this – it adds sparkle to a sketch.
The wall color was put on next – it was a mixture of Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, and Perylene Red. I mixed up puddles of paint on my palette and applied them to dry paper, allowing them to blend together wet-in-wet to create a mottled wash with varied color. Spattering was added after the initial wash was dry.
For the mass of 4 o’clock flowers in the foreground, I first painted the lightest values of yellow and pink and let the colors dry. Then I painted a variety of yellow-greens around the flowers (just like I painted around the leafy vine), dropping darker values of blue-green into the shaded areas of the mass of foliage.
Darker pinks, yellows, and greens were added later in the painting process.
While the flowers and leaves were drying, I worked on the window and shutters. (I like how the right-hand shutter is cock-eyed, just as it was in real-life.)
The first layer of paint on the shutters was a warm tan color. After that dried, I brought in midtones and dragged a bit of the peachy wall color onto the shutters to add some unity to the color scheme.
Adding touches of deep, dark brown gave the ancient shutters the texture they needed and helped to define the individual boards.
To paint the stone walkway, I sketched in a few stones here and there, then slapped on some strokes of warm neutral colors: Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre, and Burnt Umber plus touches of Ultramarine Blue, which I mixed with the Burnt Umber to make grey.
The paint dried quickly in the dry air of Provence, so I managed to finish most of the sketch during our painting session that day.
All that was left to do at home was add the title lettering (not shown here) and a border.
Looking at it now, I can feel the hot sun baking my back as I sat painting this pretty scene, with all my students hovering over me, watching and asking questions while I worked at a brisk pace to mix, apply, and manipulate paint before it dried. It was the kind of morning I look forward to for months prior to a workshop…doing what I love on a beautiful day with perfect weather, in an idyllic place, with a wonderful group of people. It doesn’t get any better than that.
I’m so thankful for opportunities like this.
One Comment
Hahaha! I seem to recognise that pink hat in the second photo!
That last paragraph of your post says it all. You have that painting and you have that memory…..forever. Even though I was one of those students hovering over you, it was great to read your post and remind myself of all your pearls of wisdom.