This small pretty village sits in the opposit side of the bridge from the Eilean Donan casle. I am sure most of us have seen paintings of the Eilean Donan castle, but I think the village close to the castle is not very well known. I think the village is called Kyle-Dornie per my phone. When I looked at the village from the bridge after the rain stopped in the morning, the view was amzing. The view was so pretty and the atmosphere was so calm, cool, and fresh. Although there wasn’t any huge contrast between light and dark and maynot be a good subect for a painting, I want to make a painting of it. So here you go. As always, your comments are very welcome.
Canson L’Aquarelle 140 lb, 11x14 rough.
Refernce photo

Sketch

Painting

While the subject is very nice, the colour for me is way to harsh and hard. A watercolour needs a whisper, and never a shout said my teacher Kees van Aalst. All is well painted, but the roofs have all white lines, because you made the background very dark. If you would made the background greens lighter, there would not be a problem going over with a dark roofline. The focal point is clearly the red house, but the view is very much disturbed by the orange and yellow house on the right, and one yellow on the left. If those two houses become a focal point, they are dead centered in the middle. And that is a design fault. cropping the image would work, but a sketch is also excellent to see those design mistakes at forehand. I photoshop a bit how I would like to make this. I glazed over the image a soft warm blue, and cropped the houses to for me the right position. But that is for me. if you like the bright colours that is fine.
Try next time to work from your sketch, and don't look at the subject photo anymore. Make your own colours. A question for the forum, could you resize the image to max 1000 pixels on the longest end. They are now 3250 and well over 2,5 mb, we like to see them 1 mb if possible The forum got a space, and if we all posted this large photos, the forum would be filled up quickly. Buying space is expensive, and we want to keep the forum for free.
I really like your picture and the realization of the motif (great subject). Even though there is no strong light-shadow situation in the photo, you have painted very good contrasts between the layers of vegetation. (Somehow your drawing style in this picture reminds me of “naive painting” - unfortunately I don't know what the correct translation is -, especially the strong colors). Really very beautiful!