White Wall Shadow, Cordoba, Spain

From the '98 Spainish collection, this painting was done in southern Spain in a city called Cordoba on a very hot day. I remember that I was sitting on a rock to do this painting, and beside me I had all of my socks drying on the rocks, which I had just washed that morning. The baking-hot sun did a good job on the socks. In the picture you can see the evidence of the sun, a clear blue sky, the bright white plaster wall, and the shadows cast by the trees.

The trick to painting shadows is to avoid the use of black paint. The shadows in the Cordoba painting are a mixture of cerulean blue (an opaque sky blue), and a few touches of french ultramarine, aurelian yellow, and rose madder genuine (a transparent pink). This colour combination is similar to the one I use for the sky, but it has a little more of the red and yellow added. Notice how the colour of the shadow varies; on the wall facing you, the shadow is a colder purple, while the wall that is facing the tree is tinted with light orange (because of the reflected light from the other wall). I will talk more about painting light and shadows more in the future as this is one of the most important aspects of landscape painting.

Cordoba, White Wall Shadow, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 1998 (No. 0947)