Memories of Toledo, Spain

Toledo is a small city close to the center of Spain, it is built upon a prominent dome-shaped mountain with a valley and a surrounding river. It's a popular tourist destination due to the historic buildings, cobblestone streets, and the McDonalds at town center. Okay, one of those things is not really why tourists go there, cobblestone streets are not for everyone. I stayed at a youth hostel located in an old castle, and made this painting of the window looking out onto the impressive landscape and old fortifications. They must have really wanted to protect that McDonalds restaurant because there sure were a lot of defensive castles and walls built! More interesting is the foreground, which shows the turret-like window, and my laundry drying. I like the blue reflection in the front tiles, and my drying socks on the ledge.
 

Window View, watercolour 5 x 8" cold press, 1998 (No. 0868)

Out and about I found incredible views around Toledo, this one was done from the north side of town looking out onto the country side. This painting is quite excellent because the sides are roughly straight, the gradation in the sky is perfect, there is a wide variety of greens and olives, and the foreground flowers have a lot of detail especially the fuzzy white ones glowing in the hot Toledo sun.

North Side view, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 1998 (No. 0869)

 

Going down to the river in the valley, it was a lot cooler than up in the city. I made a few paintings from this vantage point, this one frames some of the stonework around the shimmering river and mountainous background. Toledo was great for painting, it had a blend of country with city, and all kinds of interesting angles. I had a bad habit of tapering the painting on the right like you see here and in several of the Spain paintings, the bottom is narrower than the top creating a leaning scene. It is not something that I noticed until later. Part of the explanation is that I used to always paint while sitting down, with the paper sitting flat on my lap. Doing that created a perspective illusion; the painting looked fine when viewed at an angle, but it looked crooked when viewed perpendicular. Or maybe I was just hung over. At any rate, I enjoy looking at the old Spain paintings, and still consider this to be a pivotal experience in my long artistic journey. 

South River view, watercolour 5 x 8" cold press, 1998 (No. 0871)