Courthouse

[Kip DeVore]

I'm focusing mainly on the red civil war-era courthouse because ...

1) It's a good enough challenge with lots of factors to consider, for plein air watercolor 2) It has sort of a cutesy character, although not a very ornate or complicated one.  So most of my images lately are of the courthouse.  3)  Getting what I consider the main items -- the cupola, the windows, the flag, the two cannon, the three red granite monuments and lastly (6th), the steps with bannister at lower right -- are, all six, the main elements I lose sleep over, trying to get these in good relationship to each other -- they make the picture.  The green of the trees here is rendered with sap green and olive green -- both very good colors to work with.

I'll probably doing lots of small paintings of this subject because it drives me nuts.  The two cannon -- field rifles, they call them, are complicated, with black barrels postioned on wooden and iron carriages.  My challenge is to adequately account for them with bare suggestion!!  As labored attention to the spindly spokes, etc., will ruin the effect.  In this particulr painting, I don't feel too bad about the cannon, this time.  The main criticism I have of this is the definition on the cupola and the gabled roof -- a little to definite, and should have been more just bare suggestion.  Also the windows are too carefully described -- they also could be more suggested.  Nevertheless, I'm pleased with the overall composition, and feel it has a degree of crackly electricity or excitement to it.