Chefchaouen, Morocco
Watercolour and crayon
©2019 Charlene Brown
I was feeling a little bit envious of friends who are going
to Morocco next week. I tried Googling images of that country to see what I might have missed when I was there about
forty years ago, before I took up travel painting. One of the first places to
grab my attention was Chefchaouen. It is
famous for its striking blue plastered and tiled buildings, but I’d never heard
of it! It turns out my friends will be going there. Now I'm really envious!
This painting is a combination of several
pictures from the internet. I think this view of the mountains might have been
taken with a telephoto lens as none of the others showed them looming this
close by. There were a several sort of
panoramic pictures taken from adjacent hillsides, and while trying to include as many aspects as possible, I neglected to sketch in a suitable foreground. As artist Robert Genn once said about the
importance of a good foreground, “a wide-angled, receding landscape without the
counterpoint of a human-scaled foreground is a trip to the country without a
picnic basket.” I think a bucket list picture especially should provide for a
picnic.
