I surprised my wife on New Year’s Eve with this watercolor painting, which is of her sitting in the water almost 12 years ago in Formentera. Formentera is the smallest of the Balearic Islands, which are a part of Spain.

If you ever travel to southern Spain and want to go to the renowned Costa del Sol beaches, may I suggest an alternative to the bustling areas around Málaga?
Nerja:
Nerja is nestled into the east end of the Costa del Sol.
Beautiful cliffs, turquoise sea, Spanish cuisine, beaches, what more could you want?
When my wife and I were there, we stayed in a very small village next to Nerja named Maro, and took day trips to the beaches of Nerja.
This week I’ve been working on a couple paintings of photos I took in Spain and Portugal.
Here are a couple sneak peak previews.
The first is a sea view from beautiful Nerja, Spain:
The second is a tree growing up against a whitewashed wall in the Algarve province of Portugal:
What’s your favorite place in the Mediterranean?
I’d been thinking I wanted to paint something with a pop of red color in it.
So I went through some photos I have, and came across one that I took in Ibiza, Spain. The shutter and door colors in the original photo are green, so I decided to switch them to red in the painting.
Voila!
Sao Rafael is a small village in the southern, coastal Algarve province of Portugal. There’s a nice seafood restaurant next to a small beach, and there are many cliffs to explore around. This house is one of the few in the area that are dotted along the beautiful coastline!
Imagine yourself on a sunny day in the Mediterranean region, exploring winding narrow streets and stairways with fresh flowers in bloom!
The image from this painting is from the Old Town section of Ibiza, Spain. My wife and I visited there in 2004 and then took our honeymoon to Ibiza in 2009!