Day 84: La Galeazza
In John Ruskin’s Book The Elements of Drawing, he starts out with telling beginners to spend time to try and draw a rock. Sounds simple, right? Wrong!As I’ve found during my time here at the sea, drawing or painting a rock and making it really have the weight and form of a rock is anything but simple. It’s an elusive exercise not fit for beginners.
La Galeazza, Oneglia6×8″Oil on Panel© Kelly Medford, 2012While the region where we are, called Liguria, is famous for more than just the sea and it’s many rocks along the coast, the rocks are what I’m interested in. Liguria is full of enchanting little villages terraced into the steep mountain sides (most famously Le Cinque Terre), which have these narrow alleys called caruggi in local dialect, that are complicated mazes leading up and down the mountian.While I would love to paint these places, I’ve self-imposed the discipline of learning to paint rocks. This seems like the perfect time and place to do it. In Rome I have endless opportunities to learn to paint architecture, but here the opportunity is the sea and the rocks.All day there are people climbing and diving from these towering points, it’s exciting to watch. Instead of attempting my own dive, I’ve just painted it.You can buy today’s painting here for $120 from my websiteThanks so much for following the 120 Day Project!