Saturday, August 1, 2009

San Francisco Street--American Cityscape Painting

Usually I prefer to paint in the morning when the light is good and I'm feeling fresh, but yesterday was an unusually busy morning and it took me a good while to get into the studio. When I finally made it to my little work station, inspiration was questionable. Then I remembered that there was a new challenge offered at Karin Jurick's Different Strokes Blog. Opening up the photo for the challenge brought a deep gulp to my throat--how was I going to capture all the frantic activity in the photo? After staring at it for a while, I opened it in my picture viewer and flipped the photo upside down. With it upside down, I couldn't dwell on how I was going to paint cars or buildings or trees. I just painted shapes and colors. When I was just about finished filling the surface, I flipped the photo upright again to see how close I was to the original photo. Surprisingly, though the results were a bit abstract, it did resemble the original. That's when I added a few telephone lines and called it good. Nothing like a good challenge to clear the head. Now I'm off to the studio again. Hope you have a very fine day.

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9 comments:

Mark Bridges said...

You did well and had all the "gulps" as I had.

Dewberry Fine Art said...

I really like your take on this. Lovely color palette. I think your approach worked really well.

Nancy Merkle Fine Art said...

Thank you for your kind words. I'm looking forward to seeing the interpretations of others. The challenge is always fun!

Kris said...

I love this... and I have found that I, too, get more startlingly interesting results when I cease to represent objects and instead paint shapes and colors and lines. Beautiful work.

Claire Beadon Carnell said...

Really enjoyed reading about how you approached this challenge. Your colors are wonderful, and you have a terrific sense of distance. Well done!

Nancy Merkle Fine Art said...

Thank you so very much!

Ann Rogers said...

Thanks for reminding us of the upside down approach, a great exercise. You achieved wonderful shapes and cool colors.

dominique eichi said...

Nice rendition on this DSFDF

Nancy Merkle Fine Art said...

Thanks so much for the kind words1