After working on “Il Vicolo dei Fiori - I”, I decided to have another go at painting this little alley tucked into a corner of the medieval village of Pari. I wanted to experiment with adding more detail into my work, while shifting the shadows around a bit. I actually created four test pieces before starting to work on this final piece, which focused on detail and color.

I experimented with textures in the first piece, and was pleasantly surprised with the amount of detail I was able to add in, simply by eliminating the lines (even dotted lines) around the stonework. In the next three samples, I experimented with the interactions between colors with three different colored inks from Dr. Ph Martin’s: black, van dyke brown, and sepia.

The black served more as a reference for comparison, since for the type of artwork I do, black tends to be too heavy to work well with my watercolor washes. I was surpised to find that the Van Dyke Brown, which had been my “go-to” up until then, was warming up my shadows and calling too much attention to itself.

The Dr. Ph Martin’s sepia India ink, however, had just the right balance and served as a neutral color for the yellow highlights and the green-tinged shadow areas. I also experimented with line weight to create dimension — giving this work an altogether different feel from my previous pieces.