Not what I was going for

Last month, I participated for part of the month in the "30 x 30 Direct Watercolor Challenge," which is to make a daily painting where you use paint and brush only, with no underdrawing whatsoever. I have had variable success and failure with this challenge in past years, but it's always a good exercise, as it focuses you on looking more carefully at your subject material.

Today I decided to try something based on a painting made by one of our two our mentors in this challenge, Marc Taro Holmes. I loved the way he took this village and just painted in the pertinent details without getting precise about anything, and how it still looked like a village on hills.

Example by Marc Taro Holmes

I had a reference photo lying around of a view of Santorini, in Greece, and thought perhaps I could pull off the same effect, since a majority of the buildings on that island are also white, with only windows and shadows to delineate.

It didn't quite come out as I had hoped. First of all, I did draw in some of the buildings, just to locate them properly in the scene, but once I had done that, I was faced with how I was filling up the interim spaces, and everything got too tight. Then, I quickly realized that there were actually a lot of colors in the buildings in this particular shot, so the absence of color thing didn't really work. There are little sections with which I am happy, and others that turned into a big mess, and I had trouble consistently with the direction of the light. So...a mostly wasted 90 minutes on an experiment I will try again when feeling more flexible!

Speaking of flexibility, the reason there have been no paintings on this blog for almost two weeks is that I threw out my back and have been suffering with it until I could get to the chiropractor for treatment. I have now been a couple of times, and about 75 percent of the pain is alleviated. I have more appointments this week, so I should be back in better shape soon.

Jackson watercolors on Fluid 140lb. paper.