Quiero's Street, Cochin - stages 1 and 2

Stage 1

Stage 2

Just starting the fourth painting from my India trip, "Quiero's Street, Cochin". Above the painting can be seen the original gouache sketch that I painted there but only got 40 minutes on it before an afternoon thunderstorm came along and I had to pack up very quickly. It took a while to find what I thought was going to be a quiet place to paint in Fort Cochin but as ever in India I was soon surrounded by a small throng of friendly and inquisitive people that seemed to appear from nowhere including a schoolkid that showed me some of his own work, god knows what he thought of my sketch! Stage one shows the initial sketch and tonal block-in with Burnt Sienna and stage two shows the following days' colour block-in; you will note that I changed the perspective on the street on the left and raised the buildings a bit. I quite like the dusty atmosphere and hope that I keep it as the painting progresses. Fort Cochin is a very laid back place, particularly for India and I hope that I can get this across in the painting; these trees incidentally are typical of Fort Cochin, they must be pretty old as they are large and have a wide canopy for shade from the sun, the rain still gets through though!