Nashville, colored in, mostly

Nashville Streetscape

Here is the latest piece colored in with the pastels and lightly sprayed to help pop the colors.  I am thinking I may darken the trees a bit more and play with the shadowing somewhat yet. There were actually no trees on the original photo, but I decided that I would add some to soften it.  Old downtowns should have streetside  trees anyway, don’t you think?

Fresh picked berries

This is also blackberry season.  As you can tell, I have been spending several mornings a week out in the blackberry patches. Surprisingly, the berries are not quite a good as during last year’s drought.  I think it has been too cool and wet to have a bumper crop.  I did manage to find this year’s location with larger berries, but none of them are quite as tasty as in 2012.

Back to Nashville

After the brief foray into the linocuts and watercolors, I decided to return to the architecturals but on a smaller scale. The large ones I did for the print company were rather tiring and I needed the break. The next few pictures will be in the 8×10 range instead of 12×16.  I think I do work better on a smaller scale somehow.  I know I prefer it so maybe that is the difference.

Nashville corner

I drew up and painted this one Monday and Tuesday.  On the actual building they had bricked in the arched triple set windows on the second and third floors, so I put them back in.  I can’t imagine why that was done because the sets I copied from the left side remained, but I have rectified the error, adding back all of the character of this older building.  I debated watercolor versus pastels and decided that for the time being I may just alternate between the two.  The vote on the large ones was evenly split and I rather enjoy using both styles.

I like the darker brick color here.  I am not overly happy with the awnings but at least it is not horrible.  I probably should have just tried the more splotchy effect of the brick.  Oh well, maybe next time.  I didn’t want to just do another striped awning.