About the project
I actually put quite a bit of preparation into this painting. The source image was, of course a photo taken by a friend. You can see from the man’s mask that this was during the Pandemic, so I could not have got back to Morocco, no matter what.
I love the juxtaposition of very old methods of selling between country people, and their garments, with clearly modern incurstions, such as plastic, which appears where it is considered useful.
I decided to use mostly earth colours for this painting. This means it ended up looking related to previous paintings (such as goats, or calf at Had Draa). But this is a different exercise, as those used the Zorn palette of black, red, yellow and white.
If I took the time, I expect I could create some pretty decent paints out of the natural pigments in Morocco’s rocks and soil. There is plenty of red, for example.
I dashed off a quick watercolour study, to see how it would work. I can see even from this study that I was keen to avoid the huge piece of plastic sheeting hanging in an odd way over the donkey’s back and obscuring her belly. But I was keen on the brigh tgreen hose and the red plastic lid of the container she carries.
Yes, I traced the photo. I am not sure I can even apologise for this practice. I like a fairly complex scene at times. Carbon paper and printouts are very useful tools. If you can avoid being too slavish a copyist.