Urbino Alley, Italy

I don't believe I have posted this painting before. This painting was started in 2014, or possibly early as it is from a trip I took in the Fall of 2012. It is one of those "problem children" we artists sometimes give birth to.  It is a LOCAL TONE with light and shadow. What I mean by that is, since most of the subject is in shadow, it is painted with more flat surfaces, not impacted by light. But there is that streak of sunlight coming in on one side which produced some reflected light on the opposite building which can get tricky, so I just downplayed that reflected light. It was causing confusion, so it had to go. I also had trouble with the light coming down on either side of the bridge. I could not seem to get past a candy stripe effect on the street, so I finally down played that contrast as well. I will not publish all of the phases this poor painting has gone through, but suffice it to say, it is now the best it has looked. Darkening down all the values did make a huge difference. I also ended up redrawing the whole bottom left side so that the lines from the doorway did not go off the edge.

Urbino Alley 2014, 30x20, oil on linen

Urbino is a wonderful medieval walled town in the Marche region of Italy. I wanted to go to this region because one, I wanted to go to the Adriatic and two, I heard it is very similar to Tuscany in terrain but much cheaper! I found this to be true, especially in the off season. Heard very little English. We took the bus to Urbino for the day, as it is not an easy place to find lodgings. I enjoyed staying a half block off of the sea, so that was no problem. A pit stop on the Adriatic was a good way to take a needed break during our trip. Started in Paris (crowds), then went to Venice (more crowds) and from the Adriatic we headed to Rome (even more crowds as the day we arrived in Rome was the Marathon AND then Pope Benedict was canonizing 9 saints from around the world so Think BIG Crowds and the city shut down to normal traffic!). No crowds in the off season in a beach resort town Here is the post of the painting I did from one of my walks on the beach. The town on the Adriatic where we stayed was called Pescara.