The Babote Tower en Aquarelle

The Babote is one of the two remaining towers from the original wall of the wall around medieval Montpellier. It is also the subject of my fourth watercolor. It's a national holiday in France, so there is no public transportation, most of the stores are closed, and even half the cafes are closed. But I found some tables across from the Babote at a place called Les Negociants Cafe and got a 1,40 euro coffee. Then I set about capturing the Babote Tower.

This is my original sketch with a 6H pencil and darkened at home with an H pencil. I do my sketches in the field with the 6H so I can sketch roughly and not have to many stray marks all over.



Here it is all filled in with color.



It is still a bit wet in this shot. I went in later and darkened some of the lines so as to get the color and the detail which existed in the pencil version.



It took close to an hour to capture the Babote. Then probably another hour to get the color in. Certainly more effort than the digital picture which took all of three seconds to photograph. But I enjoyed doing it. It's my fourth watercolor.

For reference, here is the Babote on digital camera. The angle is a bit different because I wasn't sitting at the outside table of Les Negociants when I snapped this.