Market Day in the Lot Valley

Since I'll soon be leaving my nice big studio space, I'm trying to fit in more time to enjoy it while I can. So yesterday I stayed out of the heat and finished up the French landscape painting I'd been working on of the Lot Valley:

"Market Day in the Lot Valley" Oil on linen, 24x36" Click here for more info

I found the light in this region was incredibly beautiful but very changeable as well. Large cloud formations could cover the sky and cast huge shadows one minute, only to break up and allow a flood of warm sunlight. It could be raining as you drove through the valley and then be blazing sunshine just over the hill. In this scene I tried to capture that transition.

Since this is a larger painting, some of the details have gotten a little lost in the photo of the whole piece. So I took a closeup to show the people walking to market, not only in the foreground, but also those crossing the distant bridges as well: