Mlýnec restaurant in Prague, Czech Republic

This was a very exciting scene to capture because it was a night scene with wet and shiny surfaces everywhere. I love the challenge of painting artificial light reflecting off the ground after a bit of rain. It creates such a wonderful atmosphere that you just do not get during the day.

To get that warm, glowing look from the restaurant windows and the street lamps, I used a lot of yellow ochre and cadmium yellow. I wanted the building to look like it was radiating light into the dark night. For the sky and the deep shadows, I used a heavy mix of ultramarine blue and neutral tint. This dark background really makes the bright yellows of the architecture pop and look more intense.

One of the most important parts of this painting was the wet pavement. I used long, vertical brush strokes with a mix of cobalt blue and lavender to show the reflections of the sky and the figures. I kept the paint quite watery here to let the colours bleed into each other, which helps to give that shiny, slick look to the ground. I also added some white paint at the very end to catch the sharpest highlights on the edges of the walls.

I decided to add a few figures walking past the restaurant to give the scene some movement. They are just simple shapes, but their long reflections on the wet floor help to pull the whole composition together. It was a lot of fun to play with the high contrast between the dark night sky and the glowing interior of the restaurant. This kind of lighting is what makes city scenes so special to paint in watercolour.