Tuscan Repose - WIP

This the beginning of a painting of the outdoor patio area of a small hilltop cottage I stayed at for two weeks in Viano, Italy. Viano is a small village (40 people) located on top of a mountain in northern Tuscany. At first when I began this painting, I walked away from it very unhappy with the way it was progressing. I almost never work on hot pressed paper because I find it so difficult to deal with the way the color sits on top of the paper, the way the pigment blooms while it dries so quickly. Every attempt on this surface has been unsuccessful. But I was hoping the blooming would work to my advantage in this composition.

I came back to it the next day and began layering colors, working particularly the tile patio, since that was what I had been struggling with the previous day. After a few layers, I began to see possibilities. I then worked on shadows on the chair and added the first layers of the garden greens.





Continuing with layers of the vegetation, I popped in a bit of color for blossoms. At this point, I'm not quite sure if I will go back and tone down the red flowers in the forground.

The majority of colors used in this so far are a mixture of WN ultramarine blue, DS burnt sienna, DS burnt orange, WN hookers green, and Holdbein's Iridori green

Stay tuned... I'll post more as this painting progresses.