The Cat House, La Rochelle and Plage de la Concurrence

On day five of our painting trip, my Patreon club group went to work on two completely different scenes in La Rochelle. The bright seaside sun was out, creating very high contrast for us to capture in watercolour.

The first painting is titled The Cat House. This unique house was built in 1926 in a northern style, and it gets its name from a small clay cat sculpture sitting right on the roof edge. To paint the warm stone wall on the right, I used a heavy wash of yellow ochre and cadmium yellow. For the sky, I used cobalt blue and let the white paper show through for the clouds. I used dark neutral tint to make the sharp shadows under the roof stand out.

The second painting is titled Plage de la Concurrence, La Rochelle. This is a famous town beach where people love to walk their dogs and sit under the shade of the trees. For this scene, I wanted to focus on the big green tree and the long shadows on the path. I mixed spring green and a bit of viridian green for the bright leaves. I used a wash of ultramarine blue and neutral tint to create the soft purple shadows on the ground.