she paints; she is a painter

Soon, on the 24th of March I’m leaving on a painting holiday to San Miguel De Allende, Mexico!! In preparation for this trip I recently attended a workshop on “Architectural Elements in Pen and Ink with Watercolor Wash” with Barry Coombs, (click on this link to see all the details of this workshop) who is also the artist leading this trip.

A few words on managing perspective:

Compressing the image of one of those giant architectural structures before your eyes onto a small piece of two-dimensional paper is a very challenging task.  Edges and planes of buildings seem to loom off into space at unusual angles. Your eyes and your brain have to agree on a close collaboration to accomplish a convincing representation  of a building receding into the distance.

You may have seen a cube drawn with the angles splaying outward as in Fig. A; however, the correct rendering is in Fig. B, with angles, or sides, diminishing to a vanishing point. Sometimes our eyes play tricks on us.

Linear perspective was not codified mathematically until 1435 in the treatise “On Painting”, by the Renaissance painter, Alberti. He was the first to describe the vanishing point and the horizon line based on the eye of the viewer. These principals are essential elements used by artists to this day.

Below is a painting exercise I did last fall with all the angles of cardboard boxes, for an example of the challenge of “perspective”. (I do have some odd angles in this painting which I didn’t actually notice until the painting was finished! Frustrating!)

At the workshop Barry reviewed some of the principles of perspective, (he is very good at demystifying complicated ideas!) and presented us with the above photograph of the Colonial Spanish bell tower found on the grounds of our hotel in San Miguel.

We were all to paint the tower picture using the architectural elements discussed. Here is my effort:

I’m looking forward to seeing and painting this tower next week in the comfort of our plaza in our San Miguel   posada. The colors and light will be intense, the air fragrant and the days luxuriously warm.

My only regret is that my two good painting friends will not be with us. Many Margaritas will be consumed in their honor!

Hasta la vista!!