Practicing with a limited palette of Raw Umber, Ultramarine Blue, and Titanium White, my subject for this oil painting exercise are the rooftops–which actually are various shades of orange and red–of Tübingen, as seen from the window of a fourth floor walkup attic apartment in a house dating from the 1500s. Far below in the thicket of roofs and small balconies are narrow streets that wind their way through this ancient university town on the Neckar River in Germany. I will attempt to do a wider landscape scene of the rooftops in a more realistic palette quite soon. There is a great view of the city from the castle just up the street from this house–a castle which houses the humanities department of the University of Tübingen, which itself was founded in 1477.
Illustration: “Rooftops of Tübingen”, oil on canvas by Black Elephant Blog author (2018)
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