Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France

This is another drawing based on a photo in Eyewitness Travel Guides‘ “Dordogne & Southwest France.” (I love Eyewitness Travel Guides!)

Because there are so many buildings facing all sorts of different directions, perspective is sensitive. This time I used a mechanical pencil to draw the rough outline and then applied my usual technical pen for the detail work.

Notice that I didn’t do any shadowing this time. I think this one will be more interesting with watercolor, since there is quite a bit of vegetation that gets lost in black-and-white drawing. Besides, I just love coloring; it’s so much more relaxing than drawing! I usually get very tense at drawing outline (but it’s very relaxing to draw architectural detail) and exhausted afterwards. Coloring, however, takes me a long time but I hardly notice it. This seems to be in sync with the Japanese art books I read though.

Half-timbered Turret at Autoire, in Quercy 2

Today I really, really wanted to play with my new watercolor brushes… So I listened to Daniel Potvin and colored the turret drawing that I did on 08/27/2006. And he was right! I do like the colored one more, and thank goodness that I didn’t waste another piece of (overpriced) Moleskine watercolor paper.

Green is still a tough color to get right; will need more practice on it.

BTW, daVinci Maestro Kolinsky watercolor brushes are excellent, if you are in the market for kolinsky watercolor brushes. I got the travel ones, because they are more versatile. I damaged my modest Winsr & Newton Sceptre Gold Brushes during my trip to Taiwan, and travel brushes can avoid that same tragic fate. Even though waterbrushes perform remarkably well on Moleskine Watercolor Notebook, they are for smaller work and regular usage. Plus, I’m not sure if you can bring them in your carry-on bags now. Very sad indeed!