St. Denis, ile de la Reunion, view from the Hospital

The plane came while I was painting this one, it was heading for the Roland Garros airport west of the city. The skyline is St. Denis the biggest city on the island inhabited by about 150,000 people and nestled up against the Indian Ocean. I remember having difficulty with this one because the weather kept changing, it was overcast then sunny then raining a bit, then partly cloudy. I think the painting reflects that turbulent weather, you can also see the sun beams piercing the clouds and shimmering off the ocean.



I rarely use this format of paper on location, in fact this is probably the first time (after thousands of location paitnings) that I remember trying it. The dimension is very short and wide, I thought it would help give the sense of this never-ending city skyline completely surrounded by the indian ocean. In retrospect it worked okay although I wish I had more space to paint the clouds and sky which I had to compress into the small gap between the ocean and the top of the paper. Choosing the right format of paper is important though, usually I go with a 5x7 rectangle, and before I start I try to imagine what the scene would look like on either a horizontal or vertical format. In general I do the natural landscapes on a horizontal, while many of my city-scapes or vertical to better portray the buildings.

Watercolour Cold press paper, 6x15" 2011 August