Van Gogh inspired colour

I printed the scan of my original sketch for the Cloisters on a piece of very old 90lbs Canson Montval watercolour paper. I did a light wash of Cad Yellow and Cobalt Turquoise WN watercolours and then went to work with the watercolour pencils (Lyra Rembrandt and Caran D'Ache Prismalo). My inspiration for the colour was Vincent Van Gogh's Hospital Hall.

I masked the drawing with masking tape which proved to be a disaster on this paper. It ripped shreds off when I removed it! What did I learn from this exercise, apart from the nasty masking tape lesson? This is far from the actual colour of my reference (below), so it really has encouraged me to be much bolder with colour choices in future.
The Entrance Hall of Saint-Paul Hospital - 1889
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Cloistered with Van Gogh

This is the Cloister of the Church of San Francesco here in Castiglion Fiorentino. Rebuilt at the beginning of 1600, it has a Tuscan-style double loggia in a rectangular plan. I began this time with a pencil sketch which I inked over using a fountain pen with Pelikan Brilliant Brown Ink. It was a relief to discover that even Vincent liked to give himself a pencil outline as a guide. I tried to replicated many of Van Gogh's marks and the little bird in the sky is a tribute to him. I'm rather pleased with this one!

I can't go on aping Vincent forever but what I can take away from this project is the realisation that there is more than one way to make a mark. I hope that in future the marks I make will give my sketches a great deal more energy.

Since the pencil sketch took so long (I find arches really difficult) I scanned it and printed a copy to practise my marks on rather than risk spoiling the drawing. I am now going to use the scan to play around with this image with some watercolour pencils. Since I originally posted this I have replaced the scanned image of the drawing with a photograph, which shows the true colour.

See the link in the previous post for more about the Fine Line Artists Van Gogh Project.