8 Control the temperature
I painted the bridge using the earlier mixes of
Prussian Blue, Permanent Orange and Zinc
White, while introducing some Burnt Sienna
to add warmth. As a general rule, cooler
colours tend to recede, whereas warmer
colours appear to come forward. The colours
in the distance will also be cooler as they are
nearer to the cool light source: the moon.
Straight lines tend to dominate attention,
unless they are broken somewhere. I broke
the top line of the bridge with the two
mooring posts and the light flare coming
from the passageway to the left.
11 Develop brushwork
I kept adding vertical dabs of paint (and
because it’s oil paint you needn’t worry about
it drying too quickly even with the addition of
Liquin) until I was happy with the placement.
I chose to play around a bit with the
complementary colours and added a few
dabs of green-blue mixes as a reference
to the particular shade of Venetian canals
and give a little more variety to the overall
colour scheme.
9 Simplify shapes
When I painted the warmly-lit pavement
on the right-hand side, I tried to retain the
strong, relatively simple shape in line with
my desire for a strong overall design to the
painting. Using the flat brushes, I applied
mixes of Lead Tin Yellow Lemon, Cadmium
Yellow Light, Yellow Lake Deep, Permanent
Orange, Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine
Violet to paint in the pavement area.
The yellow-oranges were complementary
to the blues in the rest of the picture, so
each makes the other look more saturated
and contributes to a strong but harmonious
colour scheme.10 Reflect on the water
I vary how I paint water from picture to
picture, but here I used short, vertical dabs
of colour applied with the 3/8” flat brush.
This was the first opportunity to paint the
reflections in the water, as I had to finish the
surrounding buildings first before I knew what
was actually being reflected. The colours
used should be similar to the ones above but
slightly darker, as all reflections are darker
than what they are reflecting.
This turned out to be useful anyway as
I wanted the moon to be the single brightest
part of the picture and it would have been
distracting if the reflection was also as bright.12 Finishing touches
When I was happy with all the vertical dabs of colour, I took a dry size 2 bristle brush and a dry
3/8” flat brush and gently ran them horizontally across the dabs of paint, using the mahl stick
as a kind of ruler to guide the strokes and keep them straight.
The important thing about this technique is knowing when to stop. It is so easy to keep
dragging until you suddenly realise you have gone too far. Any areas of paint that have been
dragged over the edge of the canal by accident can be easily removed with a dry brush and
a little turpentine if necessary, as the paint below should be dry and won’t be disturbed.