Morning Wash, Venice

We have been prepping for a kitchen remodel these last few weeks, so this little studio piece of Venice has been patiently waiting on the "back burner" (pun intended.) Today I got so tired of seeing its mournful state of incompleteness on my easel that I attacked it with the brush. Here is the result:

Italian street scene painting by Jennifer E Young "Morning Wash", Venice Oil on Linen, 16x12"    I remember the day I and my traveling companion were taking photos of this little neighborhood. It was our first morning in Venice and we had spent it pretty much as nearly every American tourist does, snapping away with our cameras and ooh-ing and ahh-ing over every nook and cranny of the place. Then we turned the corner and, almost against my will, I blurted out, "Oooh, laundry!" My friend laughed, and of course, I realized immediately how silly that sounded. But to an artist, it has the potential to add both visual interest and an element of the human presence, even on an otherwise empty street. It's a mystery to me how the Italians can make even clothes hanging on a line an intrigue. But I guess it doesn't hurt that those clotheslines are surrounded by beautiful ochre stone, magnificent architecture and, I suspect, a little bit of magic too.

P.S. If you're wondering what happened to the still life I had started  in my last post, I gave it the 86. I will try again at some point, but I think I was  little overly ambitious with the size given my limited time. The flowers croaked before I could get them down, so I had to just chalk it up to one of the ones that got away.

Touring Venice

There are some times when my habit of waking at 5:30 a.m. (on the dot, and usually no matter what!) comes in pretty handy. With family visiting these last 10 days, early mornings have allowed me a few hours each day to complete this new Venice piece:

Venice Italy gondola painting by Jennifer E. Young

"Touring Venice" Oil on linen, 24x20"

This painting ( the bones of which you can see here) is the same size and format as the other recent Venice painting I posted a couple of weeks ago. They are meant to serve as companions to each other, though I think either would work just as well on its own.

In all the times I have been to Venice, I have still never taken a gondola ride. I wonder if it's possible to paint en plein air while aboard a gondola? A girl can dream...

More Venice, on the easel

I have a new Venice painting in the works this week. Here is the composition sketched in with thinned down burnt sienna. I have a lot of family visiting right now so any painting on this will need to happen in the wee hours of the morning this week before people start stirring. I doubt I will be able to do much blogging about its progress given my time constraints, but you never know. It's another 24"x20", to (hopefully) serve as a companion to the other Venice piece just completed.

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