Virtual Paintout -Alaska

Virtual Paintout for August was Fairbanks Alaska or points north, so I followed the roads north from Fairbanks. On the whole I found flat land and trees. Then I found this in the Prudhoe Bay area, with beautiful colours in the grass and reflective pools of water. Very difficult to get the scanned colours to be the same as the painting in this case.Watercolour on Fabriano Hot Press.

It’s cold here today, so it seemed an appropriate scene to be painting.

Virtual Paintout

This month I finally got time to enter the Virtual Paintout again. I’ve had to miss a few months. The city this time is Rio de Janeiro, and it was an interesting city to look at. With Virtual Paintout, you use an image from Google Maps, street view.

This is my view.

Watercolour pencils on Fabriano Cold Press paper.

 

Tenerife – Virtual Paintout

I went to Tenerife in 1973. I was on a ship that called into Santa Cruz de Tenerife and it was raining. In the afternoon we went on a bus tour over the mountains to  Puerto de la Cruz. It was hot and sunny there. I remember as the road rose out of Santa Cruz seeing slums and poverty. It seems to have all changed. Spain, of course was a lot poorer generally in those days. However in my hunt for somewhere to draw, I found that Tenerife seems to be solid apartments or town houses.   Probably holiday apartments, or occupied all year round by English people.  This is 4 Calle de la Cruz de Almáciga (see it on Google Street View). It is along the coast road west of Puerto de la Cruz.

Watercolour pencil of Fabriano Cold Press.

Virtual Paintout – Stavanger, Norway – and a book recommendation

This is the drawing for March for the Virtual Paintout – destination Stavanger Norway. I want to draw as many buildings as possible till I do them not only better but faster. This was first in pen and watercolour, then I decided that all these little blocks of colour would be quicker with watercolour pencils. That was OK till I wet the wcp, but then the Indiathrene Blue that was on the water was tooooo violet. So I used Prismacolour pencils (not watercolour) to put greens and turquoises over the blue.

Over Christmas I read the best book I’ve read in ages. It was We Are All Made of Glue by Marina Lewycka – she’s already famous for having written A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. I’ve read both now, – they’re both funny, but I think the ‘glue’ one is amazing.  It really brightened up my Christmas. Christmas Day itself was a bit trying, so on Boxing Day it was bliss to have this wonderful book to read. On Monday night I went to hear the author speak – she’s here from England for the Adelaide Writers’ Festival. She was all you could hope for – she did three readings from the book and then took questions.

What’s the book about? We’ll, it’s about a younger woman and a very old woman. The younger woman’s husband has gone – she’s put his belongings out in the street in a skip and she finds the old woman delving among his possessions. Very shortly afterwards the old woman has a fall, ends up in hospital and names the younger woman as her next of kin. This is where it starts.  It’s a very funny book, but with a serious back-story.

Virtual Paintout – Corsica

This is my effort for January for the Virtual Paintout. The venue this time is Corsica, and what a beautiful place it is. I had a hard time deciding and took the little yellow man for a long walk around Google Maps.  The great thing about Virtual Paintout, is that if I ever go to some of these places I’ll have an idea of what is there. I haven’t been to Corsica – the nearest I came is when I flew from Rome to Palma de Majorca.

This drawing is in watercolour pencils on Fabriano Cold Press paper.  It was only when the drawing was pretty much complete that I realised how the diagonals lead the eye through this drawing. Here’s what I am working from.

There are many many entries in this month’s challenge – some wonderful ones that I have to take the time to follow to their blogs and see more of the artist’ work.

Burro

Mexico City was the place for  December at Virtualpaintout This is on the outskirts of Mexico City. About where blue lines end on Google Maps.This is the link to the original. I think it’s a donkey or a horse – could be a cow.
Here it is on Google Maps
This is a watercolour painting in my sketchbook, using the basic triad from Dory Kanter’s book Art Escapes

I particularly didn’t use pen with this because I wanted to see if I could get the darks with the wishy washy pink and lemon in this particular triad, and you can see I did.