Someone on the Everday Matters list linked to the Virtual Paintout project (I'm sorry that I can't for the life of me remember who it was). In a nutshell, every month a different location is given, and you use Google Street View to find a scene to draw or paint.
This month's location was Romania. I spent far too much time wandering up and down the streets looking at everything. And I mean, that's the point - to "walk" around the location as if you're visiting it. But perhaps I shouldn't have undertaken this two short weeks before my wedding. In any event, after a lot of wandering around, I compiled a short list of links to places I was considering drawing.
One interesting thing about looking for scenes was finding out that my expectations of what a place would look like didn't always hold true. For example, I plopped the little Street View man down in a place that looked to me like it would probably have views and big houses. It was a small almost-island in the river, and in the US, a location like that would probably be a planned and gated community.
Well, that wasn't at all what I found. Instead, I saw stray dogs and people sitting in plastic chairs in the middle of the dirt roads. I was intrigued, and in fact, this little neighborhood was where I found my inspiration.
My submission was found on Strada Folclorului (the link will take you to the street view - opens in another window). I couldn't even tell you exactly what attracted me to it so much. The colors, of course, and the shadows, but there was just something about it that really spoke to me. Here's my rendition in colored pencils.
And here are the pencils I used to create it. It felt like a lot every time I reached for a different color, but seeing them laid out like this, I realize it's not that many after all. I'm making full use of all those grays, though!
Recent Comments