The impossibly beautiful town of monopoli in puglia, Italy

After last week’s extremely lengthy and detailed post about my review of 2022, this week’s post is going to the other extreme of rare brevity!

This watercolour painting is a view of Monopoli, a coastal town in the Puglia region of Italy. There was a lot about this that I really enjoyed painting and I was pleased not to get too caught up in every single bit of minutiae (of which there is a great deal!).

I was pleased with how the reflections of the pale sunbleached buildings turned out, but partly because it’s been so long since I painted reflections in the water that I was really uncertain about what I was doing!

(For anyone that might be interested, when I painted the buildings above the waterline, I continued the wash down to the water’s edge, making it just a little bit stronger in value beneath the water line. When this was completely dry, I applied a very thin wash of cobalt turquoise or, having just had a quick look in my palette, it might have been a thin mix of viridian green, cerulean blue and Chinese white but hopefully, you’ll get the idea!)

The other element that I particularly like is the variation in the foreground shadow where the colour to the immediate left of the boat captures the reflected blue of the boat before dissipating into a warmer mauve. Apart from a few of the foreground boats, most other vessels are just suggested with brushstrokes rather than any specifics.

As I said, I really enjoyed painting this, and I’m sure part of this was due to imagining myself being there in person – now wouldn’t that be a treat!