Motel Normandie has land around it with composting, a picnic table, seats behind the rooms outside, and a large vegetable garden with grape vines. I stood in the shade of the grape vines and got an up-close view. The owner and operator lives on the premise so he's always here for customers, and him and his wife live off the land to an extent. It took awhile to do this, reminiscent of the grapes of Tuscany painting I did 25 years ago but that one was bigger and took a month. I started this painting by doing the outlines of the grapes and vegetables with their local colours. Then I filled in the complicated background with earthy green tones, followed by yellow overlays with bismuth vanadate yellow (PY184). You can see my initials on the blue water collector, that is the bismuth yellow over top of blue. Then I filled in the grapes and vegetables with sun highlights and shadows, with additional details on the vines, pine trees, and earth.
Grapes and vegetable garden, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, September 2025
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