Gaston Balande Copy

 I am doing so many seascapes at the moment that I needed a break. Today I copied a Gaston Balande painting in oil to have a complete change. I changed colours a little

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French Fields Watercolour background and gouache foreground.

Had fun painting "french fields" in watercolour for the bright background working light to dark in a traditional watercolour manner and then painting the foreground dark to light like you would an oil painting but using gouache which is basically opaque watercolour. A few sections of this painting could be compositions in their own right.

For the background I used Gaston Balande's work "view of the village of lauzières with the house of balande" recently sold at auction in France. I printed it out, its an oil shown below and on my work in progress.

Gaston Balande

 I was in France last month and saw a news item on Gaston Balande, a French painter from the time of Impressionism, Post Impressionism and Fauvism. He painted over 4000 works, many are scenes from the Saintonge. Its worth googling his name to see all the different styles he painted in. His work made me feel happy and this was very welcome at that time. Anyway, I just had to copy a few to see if I could get the feel and colour of them, although I didn't always keep faithfully to the original. I was working on my knee in front of a wood fire, trying to keep warm, (awful weather in France about same time Sandy was bashing New York) so oils were out of the question as I get in such a mess, I used gouache instead. I hope you enjoy them. 

Heres a link to his work ...

http://www.gaston-balande.com/diaporama-gaston-balande.html