Let's get this one started

I'm always keen to 'loose' the white canvas, but prefer to not to just use an ochre wash, I like to get an idea of the colour balance of the composition. Using very dilute oil paint I've painted a skin of basic colours just considering the light and shadows. I intend to work over this layer using a palette knife. 

Sorry to go on about my broken wrist, but this is the first oil painting post rubbish wrist, so hopefully it will cope, at least no pencils to sharpen ( however I've now invested in a very swish electric sharpener ), already struggled to clean up my brushes today, so probably just as well using a palette knife.

Back to Florence

I'm returning to my Florence paintings, I've previously painted the Ponte Vecchio, twice in gouache and pastel, and once in oils. The Ponte Vecchio is a crazy bridge built back in the Medieval times, and boxy buildings have been built along the length of the bridge. I'm guessing that spirit levels haven't been used for the horizontals and verticals, every one is doing their own thing! 

Unseen hidden inside the bridge are all the tourists crammed into the numerious jewellers that make the inside of the bridge look like an aladdin's cave.

This latest Ponte Vecchio painting is going to be oil on canvas, 30 x 60cm.  I plan to do lots of it using a palette knife. I'm interested in the repetitions of shapes through out the composition, it reminds me of the wooden building blocks my sons had when they were toddlers. I can see my sons using a few basic shapes of varying sizes stacked on top of each other to recreate this bridge.

The other importrant feature in my previous Ponte Vecchio paintings was the light and shadows. The sun illuminates the facades of the houses, and the shutters and blinds cast shadows which all have their own colours.