Art Holiday in Spain, Day Two

In the morning we went to the local village Beniganim to work on site.  We walked around and enjoyed the village flavor.  Our hostess Loli seems to know everyone, so that was fun.  We settled on painting a church that is historic because it began as a Mosque in the 14th Century.  The name I wrote down was Christo de la Sangre--Christ of the Blood.  I did the above sketch and I am pretty happy with it.  Francesco explained tonal drawing, which is sketching in the various values as areas and then drawing the lines of the subject.  I like that idea and plan to use it more.  He also showed us how to place a perspective line and vanishing point.   We also saw Loli's art gallery in town.  Again, I didn't get to doing an actual painting, but I did a watercolor sketch:

 

I love the idea of the value sketch when painting on site.  If the sun moves, you can refer back to your sketch.  I didn't fully succeed, but it is progress.

We went back to the villa, ate a huge lunch of paella with chicken and rabbit and took a siesta.  In the afternoon, we went to a castle in Xativa that also dates back to the Moorish occupation.  It was a beautiful location, and very peaceful.  We found a comfortable spot to make our tonal sketches.  This is mine:

I started a painting, but didn't get very far with it when it was announced that the site was closing and we had just ten minutes to leave.  We packed up and left.  I hoped for a time when I could actually paint that scene....which might be difficult from the sketch.   However, I did get some photos, too.