Vermeer's Het Straatje (The Little Street) | Watercolor Mastercopy

  For my spring semester watercolor class, I decided to do a mastercopy demonstration of Johannes Vermeer's (1632 - 1675), Het Straatje (The Little Street).  The original is an oil painting and hangs at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
 I started off by drawing accurate proportions for the buildings.  In hindsight, I should have spent more time on the drawing stage because my proportions are off and my building is tilted.  Buildings and structures require more precision when drawing.  After my pencil work, I began painting the sky and then moved on to paint the buildings section by section.  I always try to work each layer from general to specific; many of the details were done in the final session.  I also used gouache to achieve certain effects such as the mortar between the bricks.
I learned several things over the course of this project.  I'm usually a very fast painter which serves me well when working en plein air; but this painting required patience and a discerning eye.  I've worked on it since March and yet I still see so many things to add and improve.  The brickwork alone is an endless pursuit.
  I'll keep working on it here and there and I'm planning to frame it some day.  This mastercopy is allowing me to really appreciate the fact that Vermeer was a brilliant painter with a mind-boggling level of skill.