Hotel de Ville, La Rochelle and Place de Verdun, La Rochelle plein air workshop

Capturing the bright feeling of strong sunshine on old stone buildings can be a tricky thing to do. I recently spent a full week in France leading a group of painters from my Patreon clubs. We painted outside together every single day in the historic city of La Rochelle. The coastal light there is very bright and it creates beautiful dark shadows against the pale buildings.

The first painting I want to show you from this trip is named Hotel de Ville, La Rochelle. This amazing building looks just like a castle, but it actually has an interesting history because a big fire destroyed much of it some years ago. They rebuilt it perfectly to keep its historic look. To paint this, I used yellow ochre for the warm stone walls to show the bright sunshine. For the sky, I used cobalt blue and left white paper for the clouds. I used a mix of cadmium yellow and viridian green for the bright tree in the middle.

The second painting from our trip is named Place de Verdun, La Rochelle. This is a massive square that holds a lot of history because it used to be a military area centuries ago. Today, it is a quiet space with big cafes and restaurants. In this painting, I wanted to focus on the long shadows stretching across the ground. I used lavender and neutral tint to create those soft, cool shadow shapes on the right side of the paper.