View of the City, Alicante Spain

Alicante Spain is on the Mediterranean sea south of Barcelona, it has a nice beach which I also painted and discussed on an earlier blog. In this painting you see the mountain and hints of the castle on top, the city, and the brilliant blue sea. I like the part of the city near the front of the painting where you can see the road and the shadow of the building. I was amazed at a particular cyclist who was riding up the steep mountain road, and then 20 minutes later would zoom down and then ride up again...he must have been training for tour de france, or otherwise he had lost his contact lense and was looking for it on the road. Painting complicated city scenes like this can be a challenge but with a few simple tricks you can make life a lot easier. In most cases, I represent the windows of the sky-scrapers with dark paint applied on top of the final wash in simple lines or dots to indicate a row of windows. In reality the windows are probably lighter than the building itself, but painting light on dark is impossible with watercolour. In some cases I painted light windows (see the building in the front). To paint a light window surrounded by dark brick, I paint the shadow first, leaving space for the window, and then apply a light colour for the window. 7 x 9" cold press, 1998