What a beautiful place this is... no wonder lots of celebs have
properties there. Being British, I have to make mention of the weather
which wasn't brilliant and there was a haze on the lake for most of the
time but it didn't spoil the holiday and never kept us in!!!
I took Hazel Soan's 10 minute watercolour book, with me which I can thoroughly recommend, easy quick loose sketches and though only a small book, packed with tips and hints and lots of these exercises which you can pick up and do within a few minutes, did quite
few of the exercises from it as I was sitting on the balcony enjoying
the view, these are a few.........
And then a few of my own
Not very good but just quick sketches, the scenes were views from the balcony which I plan to work on now I'm home, the boat house was just beautiful and I would love to do a full painting of it, this is it
and here nestled at the waterside as we viewed from our hotel
The village you can see is Limone, a thirty minute walk from our hotel. It is a stunning little village with a population of only 900. It was inaccessible from land until the time of World War 2 when Mussolini built a series of tunnels through the mountains naming them all after his lovers!! Interestingly there was a lot of interbreeding prior to this and contrary to what you might expect with an interbred Gene pool the population here suffers less from diseases such as cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes than the population as a whole... the interbreeding has bred a super race!!!
I have taken lots of photos as we took a Lake tour and visited a host of different areas around the Lake. As the geography moves from mountains to plains so the feel of the Lake changes as it moves South, it is 35 miles long, deeper than the English channel in parts and would take one drop of water 26 years to get from start to finish.... whoever works these things out have no idea but that is what we were told!!! We visited some absolutely beautiful areas though I think you can see it would be very hard to beat our particular location.
Looks like a wonderful place. Interesting story about that village. Strange! but interesting. :-)
ReplyDeleteLiked your sketches too.
Thanks Brian.....it is a marvellous place and we will certainly go back at some time.
ReplyDeleteI guess you stayed at Riva, I was there in May and had a fabulous time. I tried doing some acrylics but the paint dried so quickly - should have done watercolours like you, but I did use lake water at Melcisine to do a little scene there and a couple at Riva. You certainly picked a fab place to paint, I loved it and I see you did too :)
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