The Virtual Paintout location for August was Detroit, the Motor City! What a fitting location for Bill Guffey to choose. Detroit has been in the news lately since things haven't been going too well there. In July the city filed for bankruptcy, the largest municipal filing in U.S. history. It felt like the right time to look around the city virtually, using Google Street View for the Virtual Paintout.
I haven't been to Detroit or even Michigan, so as always I was looking forward to a virtual visit. Unfortunately the month goes too quickly and I never seem to have enough time to check out the paint-out locations thoroughly enough. I looked around downtown and painted a view in gouache. I also found a pretty nearby neighborhood with colorful, old two-story homes, and painted a watercolor of a view down a tree-lined street. There were lots of trees and big yards. I thought the neighborhood looked lovely. But the more I looked, the more homes I saw with boarded up windows and neglected yards. There is an active revitalization effort under way which will hopefully turn around the distressed city.
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| 5 x 7" gouache |
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| 5 x 7" watercolor |
I especially liked the city street with the traffic lights and flags.
ReplyDeleteThanks Polly! The flags always help.
DeleteBoth great. I like the dry brush effects you get with gouache, and your watercolor has captured the light so well, once again. I'm so impressed that you can paint so much and so well on such a small sized paper.
ReplyDeleteThanks Terry! I'm always trying to fit in time for two paintings so they are small-ish. Plus I painted greeting cards for 30 years at that size. I do use cold press paper for the gouache so that might help with the dry brush.
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