Piazza dei Signori, Padua

Seeing as how I'm fairly incapable of doing anything much other than coughing and producing snot, I might as well take this opportunity to try and catch you up on the backlog of paintings and drawings that I've done over the summer.

And, yes, I'm still struggling to breathe and walk a few feet without sounding like Typhoid Mary - I hope it starts to clear up soon as I've got things to be doing this week, apart from working on new artworks and continuing to sort out the garden - the new International Orchestra Season at the Guildford Civic Hall starts this Wednesday with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra doing Mozart's 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik', Beethoven's Eroica and (one of my all-time favourites) Bruch's Violin Concerto.  Then on Friday morning I have art class (I had to miss last Friday's because I was too ill) with a visit to Watt's Gallery in the afternoon with my sister-in-law to see an exhibition of Moorcroft Pottery that's only on for three days.  On Saturday, The Lovely Husband and I will be visiting his native homeland to see his mum; a visit we had to postpone from last Saturday because we were both too ill to make the journey and we didn't want to give her our germs and, finally, on Sunday we're off to London in the evening to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds!  This is a jampacked diary for us reclusive people and it will be a real shame if we had to forego any of it.  Fingers crossed.

Anyway, as I said, I did a small amount of painting and drawing over the summer, and one of the things I wanted to have a go at was painting light.  In early August I went for a wander around Flickr and found this evocative photograph of the Piazza dei Signori in Padua, Italy.  Taken late on a summer afternoon, the photographer shot straight into the light which is reflected off the flagstones, and in soft focus:

 

 

 I knew it was going to be a challenge on many different fronts - getting the light right was just one, perspective was another, and dealing with the washed out colours was, weirdly, the biggest challenge of all for me.  I found it deeply frustrating and very nearly scrapped the whole thing but I decided to carry on, as an exercise if nothing else and, in the end, I think it was fairly successful.  

I did it on A3 acrylic paper and, as always, have photos showing progress:

And finally framed: