San Jose Mission Part 3

This first photo shows a few steps, especially adding shadows. For the bushes, I wet the bottom half of the bushes and applied blues and purples at the very bottom, and let them "bleed" upward. The shaddows underneath the bushes are also French ultramarine and violet. The important thing about these shadows is that the edge that goes over the sidewalk is horizontal, not slanted. Otherwise the sidewalk would look tilted. If you look closely, you'll see the shadow takes a "step" over the edge of the sidewalk. I then shadowed the pot beneath the tree on the right and the pots in the foreground. 

In this picture, I have painted the low stone wall next to the sidewalk. Leaving much of the edge between wall and sidewalk dry, I wet the top of the wall and applied burnt sienna and coral.  After that was dry, I indicated some cracks and separations between stones with mostly horizontal lines. When dry, I painted the vertical side of th wall with burnt sienna and French ultramarine. 

I began making the trunks of th palm trees and shadowed the pots. To make the dirt in the pots,

just apply French, burnt sienna, and a bit of purple or burnt umber. I also put some red and yellow blossoms in the trees and bushes. Then I darkened the posts in the background. 

In the finished product I emphasized some of the arches and finished the foliage on the plants. Be sure to leave whites in the palm leaves, or they will fade into the bakground. 

For extra texture on the sidewalk or walls, you can wet the area with clean water and use sandpaper and watercolor pencil ... see the blog on watercolor pencils.