Watercolour.
28 x 38cm (15 x 11 inches).
© The Artist.
‘Vieux Cepes des Vignes’ – old vine stocks.
Brillant, warm October late afternoon light shining through the leaves. Old stocks tend to give brighter autumn colours, partly due to their age but also partly because these vines were vendanged by hand, thus avoiding the damage that the machines do to the leave whne bashing & shaking them when collecting the grapes. BTW, these Vieux Cepes des Vignes are pruned in a very improvist manner, more like mediterrean pruning than the Guyot manner that this practiced here in Aquitaine.
thumbnail compositional sketch
I was pleased with the prelimary sketch. Something about it being very ‘shapey’, good shapes & graphic layout. Note also how the evening light colours the white of the page… just like a watercolour. Makes me wonder if I might not try a series of wc’s, where very transparent colour is washed on with little relation to the drawing (Signac or Cézanne? – of course not but Dufy, yes)
There’s the thumbnail compositional sketch :
