Finished Tuscany Landscape #2 and Painting Tuscany Landscape #3

Here is the finished Tuscany landscape painting #2.  There is a post of the steps taken to paint it that can be viewed on this Blog.

This is the beginning of Tuscan landscape painting #3.  I painted the sky and background hills on all four canvases before I began on the body of the paintings, so they would all appear to be on the same day.

The four paintings were used as decorations on the walls and then each was auctioned to raise money for our Church and Church School.  Faith Lutheran, Lacey, WA.

I have always referred to this painting as the city in the sky, since the beginning started with painting the houses on the ridge in the background and until I put more paint on the canvas, they looked like they were floating in the sky.

Added a few flower patches to the grassy area and placed the road, house and grass areas in the foreground.

My 'dining room' studio.  Our hutch turned out to be the perfect Easel for the canvases, they were 4'X5' and my wimpy little easel wouldn't do at all.  I covered the front of the hutch with the vellum I had drawn the windows on, for protection.  I then used two heavy duty, rubber covered clamps with shims, spaced a couple of feet apart, covered with an old bath towel, to hold the canvas in place.

You can see here how much room the canvases took.  My husband and I had dinner and other meals on a three foot area at the end of the table every day.  Funny what you can get used to when you're having fun!

Took a while, but finally got the house, roads and landscaping painted.  Here I decided the back of the house looked too plain so I added some Wisteria.

After adding the Wisteria, in the picture above, I thought the Wisteria looked too squarish so I added more to soften it up a little.  When painting, I'm always adding or subtracting things as I change my mind.

The finished Tuscan #3.  It took from April 1st to the 6th, painting a few hours every day, to finish it.  Took one more day to do the stucco and brick window.

#4 coming up, the last of the Tuscan paintings.  Then I'll post a painting I did to go over the wine bar at the auction.  Italian Vintners!