TRAVEL WITH MY ART #3: CHURCH OF OUR LADY OF KAZAN , IRKUTSK

Hello, how are you? I hope you're doing well. I'm still struggling with low iron levels and it's not fun. With everything going on, I think we all need a bit of positive vibes right now. So, I'm continuing with  Travel With My Art , a fun art series I have started recently. The idea is to travel virtually together with the help of my paintings. My first  painting in this series was an acrylic landscape sketch devoted to a beach in Palermo, Sicily (Italy) and the second was an acrylic painting of bay Mala Stiniva on island Hvar (Croatia).  Today I'll share a watercolour pencil sketch of a place I never visited: a church of Our Lady of Kazan located in Irkutsk, Siberia (Russia). We can have a little travel talk in the comments as well. Maybe you have visited some of these places and want to leave your comment about it or you want to comment about the places you want to visit. Scroll down to see the work in progress photos of this painting. I gifted the original to a friend but if you want to buy unlimited edition  prints, stickers  or other products with this painting you can do so here. 

As I already stated, I have never visited Irkutsk or Siberia (or Russia for that matter). All that I can remember of Irkutsk is that it is one of the largest towns in Siberia and that it used to be known as Siberian Sant Petersburg. While I was browsing images of Irkutsk online, I found that it has some really beautiful churches and buildings. The Kazan church appealed to me the most. I didn't use a single reference photograph to make this painting. I actually used several reference photographs and added my own perspective on things. I would say the finished product is pretty close to the images I was browsing but not exactly like any of them. Overall, I'm more or less satisfied with the painting. I cannot say that I'm completely satisfied but it turned out well enough to be presented as a gift.

What attracted me to this particular landscape was naturally the church. Our Lady of Kazan is a stunning historical church for sure. I read a bit about the history of his church and found it pretty fascinating. I would say that I enjoy painting buildings as much as I do nature. In fact, now that I think of it, I illustrate and paint churches pretty often.  Looking at the photographs,  I think I could have done a little better job on some of the details. I think I did alright with the proportions, I remember doing some measuring and trying to figure them out. In addition, I could have been more careful with the trees. I feel like these pines look more like pines in my area then those that grown there, but I'm not going to split hairs. The colours turned out alright. As I already mentioned, I drew this church with watercolour pencils (Steadler) in my (Royal Talens) sketchbook and then I added water to give it that aquarelle feel. I added a few finishing touches with white acrylic paint (Royal Talens). If I were to do this painting again, I would have probably changed some things. Wh knows? I might do it again or paint a similar scene. It's an interesting area to explore. Now that travelling isn't possible, we can still educate ourselves about different places and travel virtually with the helps of books or the Internet. Do you ever do that? Do you read about places you would like to visit or would just like to know more about?  

As always, thank you for reading and visiting. Have a lovely day!