2017 Tour de France Stage 11 & 12 Watercolors

For an overview of my Tour de France watercolor project, click here.

Sunflowers!  I wait for them every year, and then there they are!  Whole fields of them, like in lovely Stage 11 from Eymet to Pau, as the race made its way toward the Pyrenees.

By the time the Tour reached the last 100 kilometers of Stage 12, we were high into the Pyrenean Mountains, with heavy fog enveloping the riders.

2017 Tour de France Stage 9 & 10 Watercolors

For an overview of my Tour de France watercolor project, click here.

My Stage 9 watercolor was inspired by the mountains and vineyards of the Jura region.

From there, the Tour took a rest day as it traveled west to Perigueux to begin one of the most magical stages of the tour.  Commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen said that this route through the Dordogne passed by 52 castles!  The scenery was nothing short of spectacular.  Here's my Stage 10 watercolor:

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2017 Tour de France Stage 7 & 8 Watercolors

For an overview of my Tour de France watercolor project, click here.

Choosing a castle as a Tour de France watercolor subject is simply a question of "which one"!  There are so many beautiful chateaux in the French countryside.  Here, in my Stage 7 painting (my only watercolor with no cyclists included) I chose a beautiful very old hilltop castle ruin.

My Stage 8 watercolor is at the top of the Cote de la Combe de Laisia Les Moilunes, where French rider Lilian Calmejane rode away from the peloton for a solo thrilling finish.

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2017 Tour de France Stage 5 & 6 Watercolors

For an overview of my Tour de France watercolor project, click here.

My stage 5 watercolor was inspired by the start of the La Planche des Belles Filles climb.  I always love seeing the polka-dot banners that announce each climb's start.  We celebrate the summits of Tour de France climbs for all the excitement they bring.  But every great climb also has a beginning.  More often than not, that beginning is just an ordinary spot on the road, made extraordinary by the Tour.

My Stage 6 watercolor is of one of the many lovely stone bridges the Tour crosses every year.

2017 Tour de France Stage 3 & 4 Watercolors

For an overview of my 2017 Tour de France watercolor project, go here.

The Tour entered France for the first time on Stage 3, passing through the beautiful villages of Belgium and Luxembourg along the way.  Here's my watercolor:

And then there was Stage 4.  I suppose in retrospect all other stories of this beautiful stage were overshadowed by Peter Sagan's eventual ejection from the Tour.  But my watercolor depicts Guillaume Van Keirsbulck's unintentional lone breakaway, when he took off at the start of the race and -- to his surprise -- no one went with him!  Seeing that happen, some riders would have simply fallen back into the peloton.  But not Van Keirsbulck!  He just kept going.  After establishing a 13 minute advantage, the numbers on the yellow chalkboard started getting smaller and smaller as the seconds between him and the peloton decreased.  Van Keirsbulck was caught 16.5 km before the finish line, but he survived out front for 191 kilometers, was given the red number award for being the most aggressive rider of the day, and he had plenty of TV time in front of happy sponsors, friends, and family.  Totally worth it, I'd say.

2017 Tour de France Stage 1 & 2 Watercolors

For an overview of my Tour de France watercolor project, check out this post.

Here is my Stage 1 watercolor, full of the rain that filled the skies during the opening time trial in Dusseldorf, Germany:

Here's my Stage 2 watercolor, showing the beautiful fields between Dusseldorf, Germany and Liege, Belgium:

2017 Tour de France Watercolors (Overview)

Tour de France 2017 was awesome.  It was one of the closest Tours in history, and it was full of the spectacular scenery and compelling stories that make the TdF so special.

And because the Tour de France is so amazing, I once again accompanied my nightly television viewing with a TdF personal art project!

If you ask me why I feel compelled to do a creative project in addition to watching hours of the Tour each night on tv, I don't really have an answer for you.  It certainly makes for some late evenings.  There are times after a long day at work and then watching the Tour that I say to myself, "Oh no, now I have to do my project!"  But I really do say it with a laugh.  Maybe it's because the Tour de France is so overwhelmingly great that I feel I just have to do something to participate in all the excitement.

For the last two years, my project has been keeping a shorthand notebook for each stage, accompanied by small colored pencil or watercolor drawings.  I haven't posted many of those here, but it's on my to do list!  This year, I did a nightly watercolor for each stage.

Don't expect paintings that summarize the stage or depict the big news of the day.  My paintings are simply inspired by scenes that I liked from each day's stage, watching the Tour on the NBC Sports Network.  And remember, these are quick, daily paintings.  There's no time for perfectionism!  But it was fun doing them and that's all that counts.

I've gathered a nice set of painting supplies over the years.  Here's what I used for this project:

• A old set of Winsor & Newton Travel Paints (you can see some mixing I did to try to get those reddish-orange rooftops and green trees and fields!).

• Fluid 100 brand 6 X 8 smooth watercolor paper, in a block.  It's a perfect size for fast painting, and the block set-up keeps the paper nice and flat.  After your painting dries you simply (but carefully) cut it off the block with a dull knife.  Very handy.

• A big set of Derwent watercolor pencils.  I especially like them for drawing trees and adding weathering to buildings.  Applying water with a brush over the these pencil marks creates a beautiful watercolor affect, but with more defined lines. 

• My Pentel 0.7 GraphGear 500 pencil (which I use for pretty much everything), a fine-point Faber-Castell Artist Pen, and a Pentel waterbrush.  I could have used a regular brush, and I often dipped the waterbrush in a cup of water rather than use the reservoir, just like one would with a normal brush.  But I like the idea of the waterbrush.  It gives me the sense of dong a fast on-the-spot painting with very little clean-up.  I really enjoy using it.

So in the next 21 posts, I will put up pictures of my 2017 Tour de France paintings. Enjoy!