Painting process | Evening Light, Lecce

6 Aug

I lived in gorgeous Lecce for a few months a few years ago. I never tired of strolling through the baroque old town every evening to watch the last of the sun catch the tops of the sandstone buildings, turning them bright yellow.

I wanted this painting to feel both intimate and spectacular - with the narrow dark street of simple houses leading to the wonderfully illuminated and ornate baroque church.

You can watch the full time-lapse of this painting by clicking the image above.

Preliminary sketches and studies

I thought I'd exhausted all of my references from Lecce. But then I was going through old photos and sketches recently and instantly saw a painting here. I suppose that goes to show how my eye for composition has changed (matured!?) over the years with intense practice and study.
Anyway, in these two little sketches I was playing with how to compose the final painting. I settled on the more cropped view to really focus attention down the street to the church.

This sketch helped me to organise what is light and dark in the painting. I still find it so cool when I make such a simple sketch of 5 shades of grey and it's easily recognisable as the light and shapes of the scene.

I then painted these little value sketches. To make the glow on the church work, I needed to get the contrast with the dark building right. I went too dark at first, but corrected it with my second sketch.

Finally, I painted this small colour study. It's rough and blocky, but all the elements are there for me to work off for the final piece. I particularly love the orange-blue and purple-yellow colour contrasts between the highlights and shadows. I'm always drawn to bold, rich colour contrasts and this is a perfect example.

The painting process

The underpainting took me a good amount of time, making sure all the doors and windows were in the right place and the perspective was accurate. Time spent here is key to a successful painting, even though I'm always itching to move on.

This is the first layer of paint completed. I was slow and careful with this first layer, checking the values every step of the way. I think that paid off in the end as it let me finish the painting with confidence over the top of a solid foundation.
I find it kind of counterintuitive that a ‘tighter’ first layer allows for a looser, freer overall feeling to the subsequent layers. I really enjoyed this process.

I worked from right to left, bringing detail into the facades of the buildings, adding to the three street lamps, little balconies and windows.
I pulled the blue from the sky throughout the painting, into the left-side ground floor, the reflection in the glass of the lamps, and the purpley-blue shadow cast on the base of the church.

I slowly built up the final details on the left side of the painting. I especially enjoyed adding in the pot plants on the balconies as little clues about who lives there.

Finished!

"Evening Light, Lecce"

45 × 30cm, oil on linen.

This was a painting that flowed from my paintbrush with very little resistance. I loved mixing the rich colours, and pushing them so they sing against their complementary opposite. For such a dark little painting, I found so much joy in its creation.