Today we headed to the much larger medieval walled city of Siena, and explored its intricate marble cathedral, numerous streets and passageways, and its main square where all of the action is, el campo. One of the unique things in Siena are its hand-carved doors and detailed door knockers, which everyone had a great time photographing. Several folks savored the long Italian lunch hour while others continued shopping and touring.

If you would like to join us on future ART TREKS to Paris, France in May or Tuscany, Italy in September, visit nikigulley.com/?page_id=1420, which goes into detail about our upcoming Plein Air Painting & Photography Workshops. Early registration deadline for a $500 savings is only 5 days away!

Or, if you’d be interested in learning how to paint “plein air” or improve your location painting a little closer to home, visit nikigulley.com/?page_id=13, which tells you about my upcoming Painting Workshop at the Dallas Arboretum and White Rock Lake, Oct. 29th and 30th.

On day 2 of our Tuscany workshop, we headed to the picturesque hill town of Montepulciano, know for the delicious red wines. We set up at this beautiful scenic overlook to paint the valley below. Narrowing down a subject to paint was challenging since the whole scene was amazing, but impossible to capture all of it on our small travel canvases.

Several students settled on painting the Duomo below, with its unique architecture and aqua dome. I decided to sketch in some of the buildings on the left side of my composition and show the Duomo and the lush landscape on the right.

With only two hours left of morning sunlight, we had to paint very quickly, but everyone did a great job. Bella – as a few onlookers commented to us in Italian!

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I’ll have this Tuscany oil painting in addition to many more at the Cottonwood Art Festival, CottonwoodArtFestival.com, this weekend, Oct. 1st & 2nd from 9am – 6pm in Richardson, TX. Please stop by my booth to see them in person.

Or, if you would like to join us on future ART TREKS to Paris, France in May or Tuscany, Italy in September, visit nikigulley.com/?page_id=1420, which goes into detail about our upcoming Plein Air Painting & Photography Workshops. Early registration deadline for a $500 savings is quickly approaching!

After we finished our morning painting at the villa, and enjoyed a delicious lunch of proscuittos, pecorinos, fresh fruit and a little vino, we ventured out to our afternoon location. Just one of the unique aspects of the Tuscan landscape are the cypress that dot the horizon, so we picked this long curving road lined by cypress for our second subject. This was the only day that it looked like it might rain, but we lucked out and the drops stayed away. The overcast skies are actually quite nice for plein air work because it provides some shade while you’re painting, and keeps the light more constant.

So we set up our easels along this overlook, and quickly blocked in our basic shapes and colors. Next we worked on creating volume in the hillsides, and then added highlights and shadows to the bushes to give them more dimension. Lastly, we added highlights to our road and finally the fun part – all of those cypress lining the road. Above you can see my easel set up – I like this simple lightweight pochade box by EASyL (http://www.windriverarts.com/pochade_boxes.htm), which holds everything: palette, paints, brushes and 2 wet boards.

As a reward that night, we treated ourselves to a fantastic Tuscan dinner!

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I’ll have this Tuscany oil painting in addition to many more at the Cottonwood Art Festival, CottonwoodArtFestival.com, this weekend, Oct. 1st & 2nd from 9am – 6pm in Richardson, TX. Please stop by my booth to see them in person.

Or, if you would like to join us on future ART TREKS to Paris, France in May or Tuscany, Italy in September, visit nikigulley.com/?page_id=1420, which goes into detail about our upcoming Plein Air Painting & Photography Workshops. Early registration deadline for a $500 savings is quickly approaching!

On the first day of our Tuscany workshop, we stayed right at our villa (pictured below) since the scenery there is so beautiful and painted right on site. While some of the group chose the countryside for their first subject, I had a couple of students who had never painted before and one professional artist, Barbara Mason, http://www.dragonflystudiocreations.com/index.cfm?pID=2724, who decided to paint the still life.

Barbara often paints these gorgeous pears and cherries, so we set up a still life next to her against this textured old stone wall. When someone has never painted before, I like to start them on a single subject like this, rather than have them try to narrow down what to paint from the entire landscape. So first, we sketched out our composition, and then applied a thin layer of oil paint to block in the basic shapes and colors. Next, we added depth by introducing the shadows and highlights to each object in the still life. Lastly, we worked on creating texture in the stone wall behind the fruit bowl and lastly, we added finishing details, such as stems, bowl rims, etc. Of course, when we were finished we had to treat ourselves to the delicious Tuscan fruit – grown locally – sweet and delicious!

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I’ll have this Tuscany oil painting in addition to many more at the Cottonwood Art Festival, CottonwoodArtFestival.com, this weekend, Oct. 1st & 2nd from 9am – 6pm in Richardson, TX. Please stop by my booth to see them in person.

***

Or, if you would like to join us on future ART TREKS to Paris, France in May or Tuscany, Italy in September, visit nikigulley.com/?page_id=1420, which goes into detail about our upcoming Plein Air Painting & Photography Workshops. Early registration deadline for a $500 savings is quickly approaching!