On the train to San Sebastian I asked the train man if I was headed in the right direction and he corrected me saying that I was in fact heading to Donostia. Confused I sat on the train and waited, and finally arrived in the right place. It turned out that the name Donostia is the Basque version of San Sebastian, the Basque being a distinct cultural entity in Northern Spain. At any rate, it is a beautiful place to visit, and I spent two weeks there on the beach and enjoying the good company and great painting. This painting was done on the beach, facing up towards the town. The typical white-painted lamp posts and red-tiled roofs are seen in the picture, and of course some garbage bins in the middle ground. I often like to paint garbage cans and especially orange pilons, alas there were no pilons on the beach that day.
The white lamp post is actually just the white paper showing through. To create the shape of the lamp post I have to paint around it with the background elements (the house, the bushes, the sky, etc.). It takes a bit of practice to paint around an object, you need to imagine the negative space before you start the painting. In the case of the park bench you see in the middle ground, I leave a rectangle of white, and overlay a few narrow strips of green that match the colour of the bushes, thus creating the illusion of white-boards with space between them. The clouds were painted in the same way...by putting blue paint around a negative space, just had to keep the spot wet to have the fuzzy edges.
San Sebastian, Ondarreta Beach Lamp, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, May 1998 (No. 0847)
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