My Sargent Imitation

This scene is from our engagement trip to Venice in 2006. I've been avoiding the photos I took of the canals as subjects for paintings, only because there are so many different elements all over the place. It took some serious editing to get this simplified so the drawing would make sense. I enjoyed trying to imitate Sargent's style and it came in useful when I got to a difficult area. For example, the gondolas were full of different items that I simply took out and made a varied wet wash. I tried to preserve the light areas as much as possible to maintain the strong value contrast and frequently referred to my value sketch which I will post next along with the original photo. Overall, I think the composition is strong. The drawing could have been a bit more accurate. This really would have been an ideal subject for a large painting (18x24) but given the time constraint (my 3 hour class, plus about 2 hours at home) I really couldn't go bigger than 11x14. I am satisfied with the result and am now an avid Sargent fan.