The Next Set of Watercolor Paintings for the Gex Book
Monday, October 12th, 2009Last week I did six more watercolors for the Gex book, completing the paintings for two more pages and starting a couple more pages.
There are many walking paths in the mountains and foothills just behind Gex and every once in a while there are signposts showing directions and, sometimes, distances or walking times. Here’s one such sign (click on photos to see larger image):
Gex Country Walkway Signpost
A river runs through the lowest part of the town (as rivers often do) and right next to the river there’s a fountain. This is sometimes used by a nearby car repair shop to check where the holes are in punctured tires. The river runs just below, to the right of the railing; the house on the right is on the other side of the bank.
Fountain Near River In Gex
Close to the fountain on the other side of the river, and on slightly higher ground, there are very old parts of the town that lead upwards behind the old town wall. The next painting shows the view looking up one of the narrow staircases from the street.
Narrow staircase leading up to house in Gex
These last two paintings make up a page in the book. The page is shown below; it’s a rough draft of the image layout just to give an idea of what it’ll look like.
Rough Image Layout Draft of Page in Gex Book
I’m painting whatever scene appeals to me at the time of choosing, so the pages aren’t being completed in book page order. Higher up the town the streets are steep, and some are fairly narrow and are pedestrian walkways only.
View from Gex in direction of Le Saleve
Looking over the wall of one such walkway the view is expansive, looking out towards Le Saleve, which is also in France, but is on the other side of Geneva, Switzerland. If you’d like to see more about Le Saleve you can see previous posts: A Car Trip Up Le Saleve, Part I and Part II.
This painting fits on the page of the Gex book shown below. This week I’ll paint the other scene that you can see as a sketch on the right hand side of the page, showing a view from the town looking south down the valley towards Bellegarde.
Draft Image Layout for a page in the Gex book
I chose a couple of bright, colorful little paintings for the sheer fun of it. There’s a very nice cafe on the main street in Gex. Every weekend there’s a market on this street, so this cafe is very popular with the market stall keepers and customers alike. There will be a couple of paintings, for the book, of both the inside and outside of this cafe coming up in the future. Their cups and saucers have always been a great source of fun.
Gex PMU cafe coffee cup
And there are often very interesting sugar cubes, bright and cheerful.
Sugar cube bowl at the Gex PMU cafe
These two paintings are arranged on a page to the left of the page that will show the inside of the cafe.
Draft Layout of Images on a page in Gex book
Stay tuned to DweezelJazz Art blog to see the painting of the inside of the cafe, and others, as the Gex book is being completed!
