Sunday market, Morocco

Sunday market, Morocco
Oils 22" x 34"

And here's the finished painting. It's a very different subject for me and I'm pleased that I've fairly well managed to capture the dustiness and the bright light and heat. Hopefully I've also been able to handle the figures and animals loosely, especially the characters in the shade of the tent.

Detail in sepia

It may be difficult to tell from the small picture above the loose and expressive nature of the brushwork up close, so here's a small part shown closer...

detail of donkey

Sunday market part one

Mixing up the same colours

Yesterday I showed you a small plein air oil study that I painted in Morocco at the market at Hedra. I spent most of last week in my studio painting a larger scale version while the scene, the heat, the sounds were all still fresh in my mind. 

Using my painting and a variety of photos that I'd taken I worked out a fairly detailed sketch putting different elements together. I don't always need to do this but it was going to be quite a complicated scene.

I then stretched up a pretty big canvas, big for me anyway at 22" x 34" and set to work.

Compositional sketch

Early stages, blocking in lights and darks

Market at Hedra

Market at Hedra
Oils 10" x 12"
Buy this now!

In the middle of our stay in Morocco we took a taxi ride to a weekly market and wow, what an experience! I had really wanted to see donkeys as they are used all over the place in Morocco but not in the médina of Essaouira where we were staying. We walked all the way through the market which was huge and covered everything from fruit and veg to clothes and shoes and blankets and household wares, all the way to the end where the animals were being traded. The last field was full of donkeys and the one just before was cattle. Apparently there had been camels earlier on but we only saw a couple of those briefly.

It was a really hot day and we'd been warned by several people to expect pickpockets there so we all stayed together for safety and Aziz our driver stayed with us too. We didn't experience any problems but lots of confused looks!

I'm glad we settled down to paint quickly because in the space of two hours the field went from packed to almost empty and even the refreshments marquee was being dismantled (the tent structure in my painting). 

I was very very glad of the Moroccan mint tea when we made it back to a bar :-)

Linda Matthews, Mo Teeuw and I
Photo by Eric Davis