This cityscape painting of a night-time scene in Venice was painted using acrylics applied with a wide brush (about 2"/5cm), on canvas (35x55" / 89x140cm). The canvas was an one that had stood in a corner for a while, partially covered in a red underpainting for a painting that got abandoned. I didn't bother to paint out the red, but decided to use it as a coloured ground instead.
The scene is the view looking from the Accademia Bridge down the Grand Canal, towards Santa Maria della Salute. I used two reference photos, a night-time one for the colours, and a day-time shot taken from the same spot on the bridge to get the outline of the buildings.
I first sketched the outline of the cityscape on the canvas with a water-soluble crayon, then blocked in the blue above and below it, using ultramarine. As you can see from the drips, I was using the paint very thin. The darker bits in the sky are where the crayon has dissolved in the paint; if I'd used a lighter one it would't show up so, but it doesn't matter as the sky will ultimately be quite dark. I like using a water-soluble pencil means that the drawing disappears as I paint.
(Don't get confused: the two white shapes on the bottom left-hand side were 'left-over' shapes from when the red was put on the canvas originally, and not part of the new painting.)
