Cobblestone Street, Paris, France

On a walk through Paris I came across this wonderful scene where the sun as just peaking over the apartments casting rich blue shadows across the cobblestone road. The location was somewhere west of the Notre Dame cathedral, just north of the seine river, in fact the road where you see the two cars is just next to the river, and the apartments you see in the background is on a small island. In the foreground on the right is a museum, I'm not sure what they were showing there but the security guard was quite interested in what I was doing, luckily he did not ask me to leave.

Finding the right location is half the challenge when painting ourdoors. For this scene I walked for almost 45 minutes to find the right conditions. First, it is important to find a spot where the sun is falling on your paper, try to avoid sitting in the shadow of a building. Second, it is best if the sun is shining on all or some of your landscape, in this example the road and the apartments on the right are lit up. Third, you need to find somewhere safe to sit, if you are teetering on the curb of a busy street or in the middle of a sidewalk this is not good. So after all that, you want to find something interesting to paint too, try not to compromise the first few rules too much even if the scene looks good because the results will be dissapointing. Here, the scene may not have been so spectacular (it is not the Eiffel tower or anything), but the simple lighting and rich blues and browns really make the painting a great success.

11 x 7.5" coldpress 2009