Venice - in my Studio

It's been 2.5 weeks since I got home from Venice.  Since then I've done all this:

- Narrowed down my 3200 photos to about 75 potentials that are paint worthy.  The others I'll keep for the times when I need to double check things that I can't see well enough in my 75.  I took a lot of shots from different angles, exactly for that reason.  And I manually bracketed a lot of my shots for better lighting conditions (HERE's an explanation of auto bracketing, so that you get the idea behind it if you're not familiar with it).

- I duplicated photos that had my Venice students in them, and I emailed the photos to them.  This took a bit longer than I thought, but I was happy to do it for them (happy memories!).  If any of you have some photos with ME in them, please send them along to me!  (But remember, what "happened" in Venice, STAYS in Venice!)

- I had to decide which of my potential paintings would be done on traditional paper (usually Arches 300# rough) or on Yupo (I like the translucent Yupo rather than the opaque).  It was only after I got back from Venice that I realized I had let myself run out of my Arches paper (I had cut up the last 2 sheets to take to Venice with me at the last minute and forgot...).  So,

- I placed an order for Arches and

- I sketched 2 scenes onto Yupo so I could at least get started painting.

I'm assuming that you all go through the same process of deciding what kind of paper to paint a particular scene on.  That's good stuff for a future blog post, but if you have thoughts about it, jot me a Comment.

Below is my first studio painting based on my recent Venice trip.  I'm showing you two shots...1 day apart.  Not finished yet but ready to share.  These are the Doge's columns in San Marco.

Work in progress:  watercolor on Translucent Yupo.  My goal is to make the columns stand out from the background (even though I think the background is the yummy part).

Not finished yet.  This shows the progress I made today.  Even though I REALLY wanted to be outside...it was soooo pretty out!

And this is my trusty sidekick and studio mascot, Squirtie.  Whenever I push back my chair, I have to remember to look down...cats are kind of funny when they're sound asleep and you accidentally step on them (lightly).

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